


well, what goes around (comes around)

by andawaywego



Series: City of Angels [2]
Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, I promise, It has a Happy Ending Though, Kim being extra as hell, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-19 09:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11310141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "And there it is. What they needed to say all along. What they’ve been dancing around for two-and-a-half years, finally finding existence in the air between them.Like some part of her life--some chunk--was missing for the longest time and has finally made it’s way back to her."[Alternately: Kim tries to heal Trini after Rita and ends up fixing herself instead]





	1. come on, darling, won't you let me drive you home?

**Author's Note:**

> welcome back to my Garbage City where we're about to have some multi-chapter angst.
> 
> this thing has two chapters. i'll post the second in a couple of days probably?? maybe tomorrow??
> 
> it picks up right after the first one, which you may want to read first.
> 
> you can do that [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10971567/chapters/24427614) and read up on the [Tommy stuff](http://housewithoutwindows.tumblr.com/post/161446553191/for-those-of-you-who-asked) just to avoid any confusion.

...

The scene is blocked like it’s playing on the big screen:

Kim is sitting on the bed, her feet pressed flat into the hardwood floor with her hands pressed under her thighs, digging down into the mattress.

Trini is standing across from her, arms hanging down at her sides as if she’d like very much to cross them, to protect herself, to draw herself in.

This is the opening act, the beginning of the frame story. Kim is certain of it. We start here, we end here.

In between, we find out what’s been leading to it.

The other characters are downstairs, outside, laughing in the backyard and the fireworks just started. Kim watches the way Trini is shaking, and she doesn’t know how to say that she feels lighter. Like some part of herself has made its way home.

Kim waits. She doesn’t push it.

“I can’t lose you,” she says, and means every word. “I’m sorry that I...But...Trini, I--”

The entire history of this moment would take about seventy-two minutes to relay in full and Kim would never have the patience for that sort of thing anyway. Not in any orderly way. Not in a way that doesn’t have half-cuts and scene-jumps and non-sequiturs anyway.

Don’t ask her to be able to form a rational thought right now.

It’s the closest she can come to saying what all of this means right now and she thinks it does a pretty good job of explaining the foundation at least.

There aren’t enough words to explain, though, that no matter how long you spend loving someone, you will always feeling like you’re drowning whenever they look at you like that.

Spotlight on Trini’s eyes, beautiful even when Kim can’t really make them out in the darkness. Watching her. Careful and calculating.

She crosses the room.

..

Kim’s summer starts with being pushed out of a window and with the world nearly ending. Granted, it’s July when that happens--when everything splits in two and crumples in on itself like a piece of paper heading straight for the trash can.

It’s Trini’s fault both times--it’s her that says, “You’re so weird,” and shoves Kim a little too hard in early June, when she’s going to climb down the side of the house after sneaking in (after _My mom says I can’t live here anymore_ and _I have to move_ ). It’s Trini that falls off the cliff with dust on her hands, who Kim has to meet in the water and resuscitate to the beat of _Dancing Queen_ as the boys cry and panic around her.

She’d thought things would be a little easier once she graduated, had spent the first three years of high school under the impression that everything gets better once you toss that stupid hat in the air and leave for good.

But she’s not certain how wrong she was about that until she’s lying on the couch with Trini after everything just sort of jump starts back to life.

Things are not easy.

The world didn’t end, sure. But it temporarily tipped sideways and threatened to spill her off the side, and then Trini woke up and vomited water into the dirt and she’s _fine_. She’s breathing again.

But things aren’t easy.

Kim runs her fingers through Trini’s hair, watches the way her nose crinkles just the slightest bit in her sleep, and smiles. Billy is watching the news from the floor of the living room, reading the subtitles ( _\--pharmacy downtown earlier today. Police are investigating the cause of the panic_ \--) because he didn’t want to wake them, but Kim hasn’t slept in something like thirty-six hours and she doubts she’ll be able to for a while.

She’s a buzzing bundle of wired energy, ready to spark at the smallest provocation.

Billy turns his head and smiles at her, a little more sadly than usual and Kim’s arm has spent three hours asleep under her body, the muscles in her legs crying out to be stretched, so she gets to her feet.

Pulls away from Trini as carefully as she can and then stands, watching her for a few more moments before she disappears into the kitchen.

Zack is gone. Has been for hours, but he’d spoken to Trini in soft words Kim couldn’t hear before he left--knelt on the floor by the couch and it was the tenderest moment she’d seen between the two of them in a long while.

He’d squeezed Kim’s hand on his way out and said a quiet, “I’ll let you know if I see anything.” Let Jason pat his arm as he passed by.

Jason is in the kitchen now, head hidden underneath the sink and she can hear a faint clanking noise that must be him trying to fix that leak finally. She stands by him, looks out the window at the sun setting, and then nudges him with her foot until he tugs his head out to look at her.

Her knees ache--throb distantly underneath the bandaging that she’d let Jason wrap around them, bit her lip as the alcohol burned it clean in white bubbles that dripped down her calves. Bit her lip nearly clean through because the rocks from the cliffside had really ripped through her skin and then she’d kicked dirt into them, rinsed them too forcefully as she dived into the water and then knelt in more dirt.

She hadn’t wanted Trini to hear her, see her like this, and the fabric of her joggers just barely covers the bandages. Eventually, she knows that Trini will see because it’s only so easy to hide your bare knees in the summer. But not tonight.

Not before she’s rested.

She sits on the floor with him and takes measured sips from a bottle of water she’d pulled from the fridge. He’s breathing heavily, carefully. And then he says, “When she was...I couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t feel her anymore and I thought--”

 _You’ll feel it when she goes_ , Kim thinks of Rita saying in Trini’s voice, _You’ll never stop feeling it_.

“I--” Kim starts, but she isn’t sure how to say that she’d thought it was over.

 _Hoped_ it was, if Trini were to never wake up.

Jason seems to understand, inherently, what she means, though and perhaps it’s been obvious for these past few years where this was going. From _Who is she? I’ve seen her before,_ to kissing Trini in her bedroom just a few hours before.

He must have seen it coming, too.

But she feels it, still. The _lack_ that had taken up residence in her chest in those terrifying minutes. Almost like she can’t even feel her anymore.

Sleeping in the living room.

It’s unsettling at the least and she goes to say this to Jason, goes to bring it up and ask if he feels it too--that nothingness that wasn’t there before. That’s settled under her skin in mere hours when she was supposed to be fine once Trini was awake and breathing again in her arms.

But she’s not even really sure what she’s feeling or if it’s possible that’s misreading the situation and that everything is fine.

That she just needs to sleep.

_._

Later, Kim carries Trini to her bed. Tucks her in. Shuts off the lights and holds her as close as she can, as close as physically possible. Feels Trini’s ribs expand with each breath with her fingers splayed right there on her side.

The oppressive feeling of Rita coming back that first time, that sickness that had settled over the town like a fog--the same one that had made Kim’s stomach roll and her head feel like it was on sideways when Trini was out and they couldn’t find her--is gone.

She’d expected Trini to fill its vacancy again, reclaim her previous residency there beside Kim’s chest where the rest of the boys are lined up like a row. Where she can always feel them.

But she hadn’t. Instead, Kim is positive she can’t feel _anything_.

In her mind is a slew of images. Trini on the cliff. Trini in the water. Trini not breathing.

She tries not to cry. Tries and fails and then she just tries to make sure she does it quietly enough that it doesn’t wake Trini up.

That doesn’t work either because Trini _does_ wake up, even if she’s groggy enough when it happens that Kim is fairly certain she won’t remember it later.

“Kimmy?” she grumbles, her voice raspy and her eyes hardly even opened. “You okay?”

Kim sniffles--this pathetic sound that she’s half-ashamed of--and nods unconvincingly. Says, “Yeah, I’m good.”

Even in her sleep, though, Trini doesn’t buy it. She reaches out in the darkness and brushes her fingers clumsily across Kim’s cheek before resting her palm on her neck. “I’m here,” she says, and, no--Kim doesn’t think Trini will remember this in the morning.

But it’s good enough for now.

“I know you are,” Kim whispers and she presses her lips to Trini’s forehead and keeps them there until Trini drifts back off to sleep.

.

 **Taylor Slow:** house fire across town. west elm.

 **You:** give me 5 minutes

.

Zack is already there when Kim arrives--tired and raw from leaving Trini behind in bed, having spent the better part of five minutes debating on whether it was worth it or not.

“Called the fire department already,” he tells her and the fire isn’t even that bad, but Kim can see the orange glow flickering in the upstairs window. “She still okay?”

They need to hurry.

“Yeah,” Kim says. “Sleeping.”

Her armor has been buzzing insistently underneath her skin since the night before, since she crossed town to Trini’s old house and found Rita waiting in her bedroom, so it barely takes a second for it to come out.

“Good,” Zack says and he’s close behind her as she breaks down the front door.

.

It lasts less than ten minutes.

There are only two people home and they’re already scurrying down the stairs. Kim sighs a little unhappily on instinct because she’d been hoping for something a little more exciting than a hysterical woman asking if she could go back in to save her cat.

“Please!” the woman begs. “Nugget is upstairs!”

So Kim gets the damn cat. Finds him napping in the spare bedroom despite the smoke invading the room from the small, candle-to-drapes fire in the other room. Nugget seems unimpressed by her, which isn’t anything new.

She tries scratching him behind the ears as she hurries him down the stairs and into the arms of his waiting mother just as the fire trucks arrive, but he swats at her, claws scraping unsuccessfully down her armored wrist.

“Nugget!” the woman cries out and her husband is coughing up a lung as the firefighters stare at her and Zack, standing there in their armor. She takes the cat away without so much as a thank you and Kim can’t _see_ Zack, but she can feel the annoyance radiating off him in waves.

“Everyone get out okay?” one of the firemen asks her, looking more than a little frightened--which she can understand, of course.

The visor is a little creepy and they’d probably not expected to come here and find two of the Power Rangers helping a woman with her cat.

She nods in lieu of an answer and then Zack grabs her arm and pulls her away.

They wait until they’re far enough away that they can’t see the smoke--spiralling up into the night sky--and then their armor drops away.

“Well,” Zack says, shaking his head and looking frustrated, “that sucked.”

Kim just nods.

.

They’ve been doing this for about two and a half weeks. Ever since Zack swung by her house one night when she was alone to check on her after she missed training for the second time in a week.

She’d been sitting on the back porch swing when he arrived, sliding into view and taking a seat beside her, looking like he wanted to make a joke until he was faced with the actual prospect of it.

Until he saw her face, no doubt.

That had been not even a week after the party he’d thrown, after kissing Trini on the back porch only to be left there with no idea what to do about it--what it meant.

“I feel useless,” she’d told him in a moment of weakness, but Zack had understood what she’d meant.

It was less an actual feeling, and more of a _need_. There’d been nothing since Tommy, since Rita and she had a feeling that it was actually restlessness and not uselessness. And now this new leg-jittering thing to give her even more anxious energy.

So, when Zack said he had a police scanner and made a nonchalant reference to _The Incredibles_ Kim had agreed.

After all, it couldn’t _hurt_ to help out at a few fires or break-ins, right?

The first one was just a call that Zack picked up on a battered-up police scanner he insisted he hadn’t stolen. They’d listened to it together on the steps of his trailer, looking at each other with a little bit of disbelief because it was just a check-in.

Just an elderly woman who was certain someone was lingering out on the street by her house.

They responded anyway. There wasn’t much else to do and Kim didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to face another awkward dinner with her parents where no one quite knew what they’re allowed to say to one another now.

It turned out to be nothing. Just a larger-than-usual, muscled guy in dark clothes taking his dog for a walk around the neighborhood, but Kim and Zack lingered in the shadows, armor on, for twenty minutes just to make sure.

And then they’d gone home.

“What’s going on with you?” Zack asked on their way and Kim hadn’t known how to tell him that she was pretty sure she was on the cusp of getting what she wanted before he’d interrupted her and Trini that night.

So she just hadn’t. She’d drawn the flannel she’d stolen that night around her arms and waved goodnight without a verbal accompaniment.

And then Trini stopped a fucking armed robbery and Kim was positive for a second that she’d read her mind or something.

That Trini knew about the shoplifter Kim had stopped in full armor in the middle of Target the day before, just to watch him scramble to drop the stuff he’d been hiding under his sweater and hurry out with wide, frightened eyes.

But Trini was fine, even though the guys had guns. Trini stopped and Kim wondered if she was just as scared as she was--if she was ready to burst, too.

So she apologized. Snuck into the house to find Trini on the couch and said a lot of things about being sorry that she didn’t mean, and the next morning things were almost normal.

That is, until Jason gave her a meaningful look on his way out of the house, as if to ask if she’d solved whatever it was that had made her pull him into the corner the night of the party to say, “I have to...I’m gonna go, okay? Can you keep an eye on Trini for me?”

But things have been quiet since then. At least, on this end of things.

She’s not positive that defeating Rita Repulsa for the third time in two years really counts as quiet, but she’ll take what she can get if it means Trini is waiting for her at home.

.

“Let me know if you hear anything else,” she tells Zack when he walks her back to Jason and Trini’s.

He nods and says, “Yeah, you too,” but his is in regards to Trini, waiting inside. His eyes dart meaningfully up to her bedroom window.

She sends him a mock salute and then goes in the front door rather than scaling the side of the house and going in Trini’s window.

She’s fairly certain she should keep surprises on the minimum for at least a little while.

.

Trini is still asleep, curled into herself as if trying to soften some sort of imaginary blow. Kim stands in the doorway and watches her, remembers the give of her bones underneath her palms, the cold drip of their lips together as she’d _breathed_ into her mouth.

Jason is snoring down the hall.

She’s shrugging off her jacket and draping it over the chair by Trini’s desk, just about to kick off her shoes, when it happens.

Trini has had nightmares while she’s been in the room with her, before. Kim can’t really count all the times she’s woken up over the years to Trini thrashing around in her sheets and groaning, but tonight is different.

Because Trini is gasping all of the sudden--this loud, long sound that sounds like it’s being ripped from the back of her throat, like she can’t get enough air--and she’s arching off the mattress, ripping the sheets beneath herself in her clenched fists and then grabbing at her chest.

It’s like it happens to somebody else.

Kim will think this later in this same room--soft-edged sets and backlit as the fireworks pop in the distance.

It’s like she’s standing in someone else’s socks in someone else’s life watching this happen.

Every single inch of her is shaking.

This is standing on that cliff and watching Trini tip over the edge all over again.

Kim crosses the room in two great strides and reaches out one of her trembling hands to shake Trini’s shoulder, to say, “Trini? Baby?” only to get no response.

The last word sticks in her mouth, like it’s unsure if it’s allowed to be heard or not. She’s thought it before, maybe it said _babe_ once or twice as a joke, but never like this.

And she thinks she calls out for Jason, for someone, because Trini isn’t waking up and she’s not sure what to do--not sure if this is some runoff from _Rita_ or not. She’s focused on Trini, hands longing to reach out and touch her, so when she feels a warm hand on her back, she doesn’t think to question it.

And then Trini’s eyes open.

They open and Jason is saying something calmly, reaching out, touching Trini’s wrist and Kim thinks she’s opening her mouth to speak, but Trini cuts her off.

Trini says, “It _hurts_ , Kim.”

The air is gone from the room--like the fire across town, sucking all of it away.

“What the hell was that?” Jason asks a second after Trini stops shaking and is breathing normally again. When she slackens in pain and slumps into Kim’s arms because she feels strong enough to hold her now. Strong enough to do something.

Trini isn’t sleeping. Just breathing shallowly and gripping the back of Kim’s t-shirt. Saying, “What’s going on?”

Kim doesn’t have answers. She presses her lips to Trini’s forehead and says, “I don’t know.”

.

 **You:** get over here asap okay?

 **Baby Blue:** Is Trini okay?

 **You:** i don’t know. just get here.

 **Baby Blue:** Be there soon

.

Billy gets to the house in twenty minutes and somehow manages to have coffee for all of them. Trini is sitting on the couch beside Kim, wrapped in her arms with a blanket tucked around her shoulders, staring at the floor.

“What happened?” Billy asks, but they don’t really have an answer because none of them really know.

 _Some sort of attack,_ Kim wants to say, but thinks that it might carry a different weight than she’d intended for it to. That it might sound like what happened with Rita rather than something else--as in _asthma_ or _panic._

Jason’s answer is always the same. “We need to get to Zordon.”

“I’m fine,” Trini says, trying to wiggle out of Kim’s grasp. “I think it was just a nightmare.”

“You’re not fine, Trini,” Jason argues and he comes over to stand in front of her, to duck down and press his hands against her knees. “What happened with you...it was really bad, okay? Let us worry for a little while longer.”

Trini doesn’t seem to have any fight left in her because her posture droops and she covers one of his hands with her own.

Kim texts Zack to stop coming, to stop walking or running across town and just get down to the ship because that’s where they’re going anyway and it’s less of a trek for him that way.

He answers in five seconds flat.

Says, _see you there,_ and Kim slips her phone into her back pocket before helping Trini to her feet.

.

They don’t teleport. Billy says something about it being reckless.

They drive instead and Kim spends the entire time holding Trini’s hand in this loose and nervous way. Not even twenty-four hours ago they were standing in Trini’s bedroom saying _I love you_ and kissing in the bright sunlight streaming in through the window.

It feels ridiculous to not know where she’s supposed to stand now, but that’s where Kim has found herself.

She carries Trini down to the water this time, even though Jason offers. She’s light and shivering on Kim’s back, her arms firm around her neck as she climbs down the rocks and lowers them gently into the water.

“Better than that first time,” Trini huffs airily into Kim’s ear and she’s smiling despite the connotations of this visit.

Kim laughs and swims fast enough down to the cave that holding her breath feels sort of pointless.

.

“I don’t think it to be anything serious,” is the best Zordon can come up with, but it sounds pandering and somehow untrue and Kim wants to yell at him.

She wants to yell and scream because _he wasn’t there_. He didn’t see Trini struggling to breathe.

“See?” Trini says, turning to look at the rest of them, that familiar, blatant defiance in her eyes. “I’m fine. Told you.”

“Wait a second, Zordon,” Jason cuts in and he moves forward, closer to the wall, stepping around Trini and Kim to do it. “What happened seemed pretty serious.”

Zordon looks frustrated, if that’s possible, and Kim is so sick of this.

She’s so sick of standing here listening to him tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Trini is holding her hand and she squeezes Kim’s fingers.

“Could this be something to do with the way Rita took control of her?” Billy pipes in from the back of the room.

Zordon swivels to look at him. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility. But what happened with Rita was a first for a Ranger team. Never before has a coin been destroyed the way it was. There would be no knowing what the side effects would be.”

“There are no side effects,” Trini says. “I’m fine.”

Kim looks at her, exasperated, but doesn’t let go of her hand. Feels the worry, the tension, rolling down her back. “Was her connection severed?” she asks and everyone gets quiet. Everyone looks at her. “Because…” She glances at Trini and then away--hates the way Trini’s eyes have gone distant in confusion. “When she was...I couldn’t feel her anymore and it hasn’t been the same since then.”

There’s no other way to describe it, but Jason and Billy look like they’re maybe on the cusp of agreeing with her.

“The connection between you is strong. Between all of you,” Zordon tells them. “But it is possible that it was damaged while Rita was in control. Your coins are extension of you and Trini’s might have sensed Rita’s presence and attempted to cut away from you in order to protect the other coins.”

“Or ours cut away from hers,” Billy says and no one else has anything to add.

Zordon lets out a noise that sounds like a sigh, but can’t be because he’s a wall that doesn’t breathe. A wall that just stares at them blankly somedays like he can’t believe that the only people closest and worthy enough for these stupid coins were five teenagers who have no idea what they’re doing.

“If that happened, how would we fix it?” Jason cuts in, sounding shriller than Kim has heard him in a long time.

Trini has grown quiet, looking down at her feet rather than at the rest of them. Kim squeezes her hand, drawing her eyes upward and remembers that stupid joke her uncle tried on her during her first day of flying lessons with him.

 _If the engine ever fails, hit this button,_ he’d told her, pointing to a button at the top of the console and Kim had frowned, asked what it did and he had just laughed. Said, _Nothing, but it’ll give you something to do on our way down._

“The episode you experienced might have been Trini’s coin attempting to reestablish her connection,” Zordon says, but Kim doesn’t look up. “It could just as likely be the affects of the trauma she went through.”

“Fixing the connection could hurt her?” Billy asks, and his voice sounds shrill and more than a little unsure.

“If a deep emotional and psychological connection was cut,” Alpha-5 cuts in, “it would cause damage. Her coin may be trying to heal that damage.”

He moves closer to Trini, his metal feet clacking against the floor, and then he stares up at her for a moment before saying, “You seem alright to me.”

Kim wants to argue that something is off, even if Zordon doesn’t believe her. Doesn’t believe _them_.

Because she’s gotten so used to feeling her wherever she is over these years--gotten so used to closing her eyes at night and feeling Trini’s steady breathing and muted emotions from across town.

And now there’s an emptiness in her chest beside where she thinks all of that used to reside.

“You must not let fear motivate you,” Zordon says. “Trust each other. You are a team. Trini will always be a part of that team.”

Kim remembers that first campfire and scaling the side of Jason’s parents’ house, telling him about the Amanda thing and how they could only morph after everything with Billy.

She wonders what it would take this time, to fix this.

Trini goes to leave. Pulls her hand out of Kim’s and everything and walks back towards the door that had closed behind them when they entered. But it doesn’t open like it usually does as she approaches. It just stays closed.

From where she’s standing, Kim can see Trini’s shoulders slump down in defeat or confusion and she’s so terrified of seeing them quiver--of Trini crying over this after _everything_ \--that she goes after her and stands there by the door.

It opens for her, at least. Which means Trini can leave.

Which means Kim can go with her.

.

“What are you thinking right now?” Kim says, wet again and leaning against the door of her car.

The boys are lingering somewhere out of sight and Kim tries to send them her gratitude in waves she hopes they feel and then remembers that Trini _can’t_ feel it.

Trini can’t feel _her_.

“Nothing,” Trini says. “I’m fine.”

It sounds like a lie and Kim wants to reach across the distance between them and says, **_This_ ** _is the problem._

_This is what got us into trouble in the first place._

Because they don’t talk about things. They never dealt with Tommy and they never dealt with this Rita stuff and for two-and-a-half years, the two of them dodged around this inevitability between them and they’ve yet to say anything beyond what they’re feeling for each other.

Anything regarding what those feelings mean now.

Old Kim, she thinks, would have said, _No, you’re not. We need to talk about this. About_ **_us_ ** _._

Or something very like that.

This Kim feels the shiver of the water dripping down the small of her back and puts her hands on Trin’s waist to pull her close, thumbs brushing back and forth over the bony curves of her hips.

Doesn’t say that they need to talk about this--all of it. What it means for them that Trini nearly died and that they maybe can’t feel each other right now and how that’s going to affect or change them. If it will at all.

Doesn’t say anything.

.

 **Wally Cleaver:** you guys good?

 **You:** define “good”

.

Trini asks to see her family. It’s early enough that this seems plausible. There’s a good chance of the door being opened in response to the doorbell ringing.

So Kim drives her there, drums her fingers against the hot rubber of the steering wheel and pressing down too hard on the gas. Trini is silent in the passenger seat, just sort of staring out the window and waiting for something to happen.

Kim sort of plans on staying in the car, but Trini gives her this look once she parks in the driveway and then she’s out of her seat and following obediently to the front door.

Trini’s small. That’s never been an open discussion. But she somehow seems smaller standing in front of that front door, dwarfed by the pillars on either side of the front porch. She hesitates for exactly four seconds before knocking. Kim counts them in taps of her fingers against the hem of her shorts and then presses that hand into Trini’s back, bracing her arm when Trini leans into her.

“Trini?”

June Ortiz-Kwan looks different than the last time Kim saw her, her eyes a little more dull but it’s been at least a month and the last time had been just after graduation. She seems less angry now, less bottled up and Kim wonders what percentage of their issues has been solved, if any, by whatever happened in in that pharmacy on Saturday.

She’d go with less than half from the way Trini shuffles her feet.

“Hey, Mom,” she says and then June is pulling her away and into her arms.

Kim stands on the porch, unsure if she’s allowed inside, and she remains there until she catches sight of Trini’s dad coming down the stairs just ahead, just within eyesight. He smiles when he sees her there and then lifts a hand to wave her inside.

There’s little Kim can do but obey.

.

“How are you? Are you eating enough? Getting enough sleep? Where are you living? Have you been staying with Kimberly? What happened? Why did you run from me? Are you coming over for the fireworks tomorrow night? I was so worried when--”

Kim sits on the couch beside Trini, watching Trini’s mother putter around the room with a duster in her hand, wiping down every surface she can reach. The questions don’t stop--never did in past times Kim has been present for--but this is the first time she’s ever seen Trini look so calm under fire.

This scene is always blocked this way--Trini’s slumped in posture, her eyes drifted away towards something more interesting on the wall; her mother dusting things that are already clean, always doing something with her hands and _staring_ at Trini. Expecting her to crack.

Trini’s dad leaned back in his chair with the newspaper open in front of him, his tie loose around his neck.

Kim’s knees ache and she presses her fingertips gingerly to the edge of the bandaging hidden beneath her-- _Trini’s--_ sweatpants. They’re too short and come up above her ankles, so she has them bagged up stylishly to just below where the bandage stops.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Trini says, cutting off her mother’s tirade, and she sounds like she wants to believe it.

Kim wants to believe it, too, but she’s having a hard enough time just keeping her distance. Just keeping herself from touching Trini’s arm with her hand.

“What happened the other day?”

That seems like the one question Trini can’t brush off, and Kim watches as her shoulders stiffen. As she protects herself from the memory, more likely, and what she’s going to have to say next.

But all she says is, “I just--” and shoots Kim this look that burns tight in the back of Kim’s throat.

She wants to be alone.

Kim gets to her feet achingly, trying not to wince as she turns her eyes back to the others. “I’m just…”

She tries to finish, but it turns out that she doesn’t even really have a good answer, so she just doesn’t. Instead, she just gestures to the door and sees herself out.

On the way, she passes by Diego and Alex, both of them wearing their swim trunks and looking a little on edge.

“Are you leaving?” Diego asks, looking up from where he’s digging his flip flops out from the bottom of a stack of shoes.

Kim nods. “I’m gonna wait outside, actually,” she says and Alex perks up at this.

“I got a new bike,” he says, and he sounds substantially younger as the words pass his lips. She remembers him as she met him two years prior--nine-years-old and enamored with her. He’s eleven now and probably starting to outgrow impressing his big sister’s friends.

But maybe not just yet.

She understands, too, that it’s possible he’s throwing her a lifeline.

A, _Well, if you have to go outside, I’ll come with you,_ and her throat tightens a bit at the prospect--imagining the softness of Trini’s eyes in his, in the shape of his nose and the gap in his teeth.

“Can I see it?” she asks and Alex nods eagerly, leading her out the front door and towards the garage.

Diego follows after them, closing the door shut behind them.

.

It’s a nice enough bike--green with _Mongoose_ written in blue across the middle bar. Kim at eleven would have been jealous.

Kim at nineteen is happy for the distraction. She sits on one of the large, decorative boulders lining the edge of the driveway with Diego beside her, pressing his bare feet flat against the dark brown mulch below them. Alex rides in circles, as if performing some great circus act rather that just riding around a driveway.

“It’s a twenty-one speed,” Alex tells her and Kim nods along, smiling distantly without meaning to at the way he grins--so much like his sister.

It’s a mountain bike, which seems sort of ridiculous for someone his age, but Kim doesn’t get a chance to say that.

“How is your summer going, Kimmy?” Diego asks and Kim smiles again because they’re the only ones who don’t get punched for calling her that.

Them and their sister.

They’ve said it since she met them--just a month after everything with Rita went down that first time--and she’d never quite grown enough courage to correct them.

Now, she supposes, it’s too late. Not that she really minds in the end.

“It’s okay,” she tells him because she’s not sure what else to say beside _It sucks and your sister almost killed me and then herself_.

That wouldn’t end well, she thinks.

“How are you boys doing?”

“Good,” Diego says, always the more serious of the pair. He nods and considers his each sentence, waits until it’s perfected in his mind before he even begins to say it.

Trini does that, too, but only when she’s really tired and Kim wonders if it’s a genetics thing or a learned behavior sort of deal.

“The paper said the Power Rangers put out a fire last night,” he tells her and Kim tries to look shocked.

She really does.

But she’s tired and ragged and stretched thin like a rubber band. She probably ends up pulling a face like a maniac.

“They did, huh?” she asks, and immediately winces because of how patronizing she makes it sound. How condescending. Like she’s talking down to them or something.

“Totally!” Alex calls and he hits the brakes on his bike so hard that he nearly sends himself flying off the seat. “The Pink and the Black one!”

Kim’s not exactly positive what emotion you’re supposed to feel when someone says something like this, but the one she ends up feeling is guilt. Unmistakably. She thinks of Zack, heading into his Monday-Wednesday-Friday job at the grocery store downtown and wonders if he’d seen the newspapers stacked up in racks by the registers.

Bruce Wayne probably doesn’t feel guilty, though--not for saving people’s cats from house fires, at least--so she tries to brush it off.

She can do the vigilante-by-night, civilian-by-day thing just as well as he can.

“That’s pretty cool,” she decides and her mind is in two pieces, she thinks.

The front end--the functioning end, the one that’s letting her speak--and the other half that’s sluggish and delayed and foggy. The back of her head. The part that needs rest and the part that’s making her knees itch so badly that she wants nothing more than to rip the stupid gauze off.

“Cooler than cool!” Alex calls and he’s biking again. He jerks his hands up on the handlebars and it occurs to Kim a second before he nearly falls over that he might be trying to do a jump of some sort.

Silence descends between them, but it’s not necessarily uncomfortable. Not the kind of silence that Kim sits in with her half-sister on Thanksgiving every year. It’s the kind of silence that stems not from not being able to bridge some sort of gap but rather from there not being a gap at all--no real drive to fill every passing second with distracting noise.

Someone is turning their sprinklers on across the street and Kim wants to shout that they’re in a drought and how _necessary_ is that? But she doesn’t. She just sweats into the back of her t-shirt on that stupid boulder and tries to ignore the way her knees are burning hot under layers of gauze and tape.

“Is Trini okay?”

The question is shocking and Kim almost slides to the ground.

It’s Diego who says it, of course--who thinks to question his sister’s disappearance and closed-off body language. The fact that Kim had left her alone in the house when she _never_ does that during normal house visits.

Alex stands up on the pedals and rolls down the driveway and a little into the street, making a big, wobbly circle before coming back. Kim watches him and contemplates the correct answer.

What she should say.

Her mouth is dry and she hates California. She really does.

“Why?” she decides finally, because she doesn’t really feel qualified enough to answer that.

Not when she doesn’t even know if she _herself_ is really okay.

Diego shrugs and turns away. He usually has no issue with eye contact, but he seems to be struggling just then. Kim doesn’t force him. Never forces his sister, either.

“I don’t know. Why did she move out? Is it because Mom and her kept fighting?”

She’s _definitely_ not qualified to answer that, even if she thinks she has it written down somewhere in the back of her mind. She reaches up and runs her fingers through her hair, pulling some of the sweatier strands away from her head so it can breathe. “Why don’t you ask _her_ that?”

But that appears to be the wrong answer because Diego looks even more dejected than he had mere moments before. Kim isn’t sure what to do with that or him or herself really, so she just waits it out.

“She wouldn’t answer anyway,” he says honestly and then he finally turns his eyes up to meet hers. “You’re dating her. Shouldn’t you know?”

His words go through her. Right into her chest and out the other side like a clean bullet wound that should leave her bleeding and instead leaves her gasping for air.

It’s not anything monumental, nothing huge or life changing or really anything _like_ that. There’s no reason to react like a child.

And yet--

“I’m not dating your sister,” she says because she _isn’t_. Not in any real sense of the word, but not for lack of trying.

Not for lack of waiting for it and kissing her breathless yesterday and running after her when she was certain the only thing waiting on the other side was death.

Her dry mouth catches the words on the tip of her tongue, leaving behind an unfamiliar taste that makes her wish she had some water with her.

It’s a knee-jerk reaction, really. That’s the problem. Some leftover fear of Tommy and what he’d said to Trini’s parents that made Trini regret trusting her and this overwhelming and automatic need to protect her privacy. Whatever that means.

Because even if they’re not _dating_ , they are involved at least. They’ve kissed and said _I love you_ even if they never discussed what that means for them now.

Diego looks at her in disbelief, the light catching a glint in his eyes that she knows spells trouble by now. “Yeah, you are,” he says matter-of-factly, the sentence coming off in a way that makes her feel microscopic.

“Why do you think we’re dating?” he asks, but she knows the answer--can feel it in the tingle on her lips from the last kiss Trini pressed there, in the way she’s already empty from missing her even though they’ve hardly been apart fifteen minutes.

She’s known it for years.

And she certainly doesn’t need him to say--

“‘Cause of the way you guys act. It’s gross.”

But he says it anyway.

Kim nearly scolds him for that because if her and Trini are _anything_ after all she’s been through in the past forty-eight hours, then it certainly doesn’t deserve to be labelled as “gross”. There’s little she can do to stop him, though, so she’s left with pretty much no other option than to simply let it slide.

It doesn’t matter either way, though, because Diego hurries on with whatever his initial point had been, the embarrassment he’d caused her left far behind as the minutes tick on.

“Is she gonna move back in?” he asks.

Kim thinks the answer is _no_ \--can’t imagine a world where everything was fixed enough that it could be _yes_ \--but she doesn’t want to say that.

Instead, she says, “Why don’t you guys come see where she lives now sometime? It’s pretty cool.”

Like she’s talking to six-year-olds instead of kids the same age as Harry Potter when he defeated Voldemort that first time.

It works, though, which he thinks might be a testament to them rather than to her.

.

It’s another twenty minutes before Trini comes back out and, by then, the boys have returned to the safety of the air-conditioned living room to wait for their mother. Kim sits in her car with the windows rolled down, lets herself sweat against the leather seats like she’s trying to punish herself for some crime she pleaded innocent to.

Trini’s dad comes out a few minutes after the boys disappear and it isn’t until he’s waving as he backs down the driveway that Kim looks at the clock on her phone.

_8:33 A.M._

She’d thought it was later than that.

It gets too hot after a minute or two and she gets out of the car because she doesn’t want to dig around the pockets of Trini’s pants for her keys. Instead, she kicks up dirt on the edge of the sidewalk and then reaches down to gather a few tiny flowers from the grass. They’re brown and possibly half-dead but Kim picks them up anyway, pinches their stems between her fingers until a bit of their juice slips across her knuckles.

“Hey.”

When she looks up, Trini is there, standing in her pajamas with her arms crossed like it isn’t at least a hundred degrees in the shade.

Kim smiles immediately, reflexively. She doesn’t mean to.

“Hey,” she says and holds out the tiny, half-dead flowers. “Got you these.”

Trini smiles and takes a step forward to receive them, holds them in her hands the way Kim did and says, “Did you rip these out of my lawn?”

Still smiling, Kim says, “Would you be mad if I said yes?”

“Of course not.” Trini bridges a couple more steps between them, shuffling her feet so that there’s less than ten inches between their bodies. “They’re weeds, though.”

Kim smiles and Trini steps closer still and if they weren’t standing outside of Trini’s house--if her mother wasn’t in the doorway with her brothers getting ready to head across town to escape the heat--Kim would probably pull her in and kiss her. They've been here before--existed in moments like these--and Kim is usually strong enough to restrain herself.

She’s spent the better part of two-and-a-half years fighting the urge, and she thinks she’s finally getting to the point where she may not be able to anymore.

In the car, Trini blasts the A/C and looks out the window, watching her parents’ SUV disappear up the street, until Kim says, “Want breakfast?”

And then she nods.

.

There’s a diner in the next down over, just a couple of streets away from the mall and Kim drives them there without thinking about it--too nervous to go downtown after seeing Trini by the Krispy Kreme the last time.

Her knees ache and they look ridiculous--Trini in one of Jason’s too-big shirts and Kim in her sweatpants, wearing socks with her Toms. They look absolutely crazy.

When they’ve ordered, when it’s silent except for a couple of other families eating around them and the distant noise of the kitchen, Kim isn’t sure what she’s allowed to say.

More than anything, she wants to ask why she’d been made to leave--what it was that Trini couldn’t say to her mother in front of her.

And then she remembers.

Tommy. Tommy and his vendetta-- _Rita’s_ vendetta--and Trini saying, _I thought I could trust you guys. I thought_ \--

And she doesn’t need to ask anymore.

Trini is fidgeting with her hands on the tabletop and Kim is so absolutely frightened of losing her--so viscerally terrified--that it feels as though something, some inevitable doom, is creeping up to watch her over her shoulder.

“Can I--” she starts, nudging her own hand across the space between them and Trini seems to understand.

She meets her halfway and then her wrist is warm under Kim’s fingers.

“How are you feeling?” she asks eventually, feeling the courage bubbling away as the question dissipates in the air.

Trini sighs through parted lips, the air coming out in a huff that blows minty fresh across the space between them. “I’m fine.”

But Kim isn’t sure that she has it in her to believe her, wants to prod but doesn’t want to put too much on Trini’s plate, so she just bobs her head along.

Some compact history of the past year or so is rushing into her ears, into her chest and breaking apart into a million pieces in a shattering storm that sounds like Trini saying, _How could you? I mean...I thought...after Amanda that you--_

She remembers that moment with such a distinct clarity that she thinks if she ever hit her head--if she ever had amnesia or if anything every happened to wipe her memory--she would always remember it. And if not the words, then the way it felt to have them said to her.

The way everything fell silent the moment the accusation was said.

Kim supposes she can’t blame Trini. Not really. And at the time, she’d felt her argument of _You can run from the boys, but you can’t run from_ **_me_ ** _,_ fall dead on her tongue. Because she’d loved Amanda. Grown up with her.

And then she’d screwed her over so completely that the run-off from it has never completely gone away.

Kim had thought she’d be able to move on from it eventually. That one day she’d wake up and look at herself in the mirror and think _You’re okay. You’re healing. You deserve grace,_ and maybe she’d been getting there before Tommy, but she’s certainly been heading in whatever the opposite direction of it would be since him.

Because Tommy Oliver outed Trini to her parents and she’d assumed that it must have been one of them. Maybe even Kim, with her track record of flagrantly disregarding the privacy of her old friends. Because who else had she told?

Later, Tommy left a foot-shaped bruise on Kim’s chest and nearly killed them all. They’d almost died in that fight, but she will always regard Trini standing there in front of her just past the ship, eyes shimmering either from the water above them or from unshed tears and looking at Kim like she couldn’t believe she trusted her as the moment when he almost won. Even if she hadn’t known it was him tearing them apart at the time.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Trini asks.

Kim wants to ask how Trini could ever trust her--how they’re even sitting across from one another--and if it’s possible that she _doesn’t_ love her at all--that Rita had been mistaken and the one _I love you_ they’ve shared since then had been a lie.

But she knows it wasn’t because Trini would never lie like that. Trini would never kiss her, let herself be kissed, if she didn’t mean it.

It just feels impossible that Trini could have ever forgiven her after thinking that, even once she’d known the truth.

“Because you’re pretty,” she says and it isn’t a lie, but Trini rolls her eyes like it must be.

“Lies. Lies and slander.”

“How is it slander if it’s a compliment?”

Trini doesn’t answer, but she does squeeze Kim’s fingers with her own and part of Kim thrills at that--at the fact that everyone in this diner will see them, holding hands like this on the table. Everyone will look over here and know that Trini is hers.

“How long does it take to make waffles?” Trini asks a moment later, craning her neck as though a simple turn of the head will show her the kitchen.

“Apparently too long,” Kim answers and Trini doesn’t pull away. She just looks across the table and smiles distantly.

Like Billy invented time travel as well as teleportation and they’ve gone back to before Tommy started tearing the group apart, back before Trini had acknowledged that she didn’t really trust any of them--Kim _included_ \--and before Kim had known about it.

Before Rita took over Trini’s body and held her over the edge of a cliff and Kim had been certain--absolutely positive--that there was no way out of it alive.

Back to a time when smiling across the table at each other is the simplest thing in the world.

And Kim just wants to stop. She just wants to squeeze Trini’s hand in hers and just stop and say, _Please, please, don’t ever make me go through that again._

Even if it’s not something that Trini can necessarily promise.

She settles for lifting Trini’s hand and pressing her lips to the backs of her knuckles, smiling a little when Trini does, looking awed.

Kim realizes for the first time in that moment that Trini might be just as unsure as she is.

“Am I allowed to do this?” she asks, her lips stretched out in a smile against Trini’s skin.

Trini nods sort of dazedly. “Yeah,” she coughs and Kim lowers her hand back to the table. “You don’t have to ask, dude.”

Their fingers lace together and then Trini taps out some sort of rhythm with her thumb against Kim’s.

When they’re food comes, they don’t even bother separating. Kim isn’t sure she could anyway.

Not even if she wanted to.

.

 **Zack ‘Attack’ Taylor** _@Zackipedia --_ 17m

4th of july is the sluttiest holiday

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner_ \-- 13m

 _@Zackipedia_ Wtf how?

 

 **Zack ‘Attack’ Taylor** _@Zackipedia -- 10m_

 _@whatsfortrinner_ had a feeling that would get you to respond. tell ur girl to answer her phone.

.

_Crime_

**Is the Green Power Ranger Back?**

Thomas Oliver, 19, was injured in an armed assault Saturday evening, attacked by what he described to be the Green Power Ranger, last seen in Angel Grove five months ago during the destruction of...

_TODAY AT 10:43 A.M._

.

“Did you get the article I sent you?”

Kim is barely out of her car when Zack bombards her, trapping her between her door and the actual driver's seat so that she can’t really move. His eyes are wild and a little panicked and she’s afraid to say _no_ more than she’s afraid to lie and say _yes_ , for some reason.

Trini is already up by the front door of the house, having gotten out of the car before Kim did--before Zack could corner her _too--_ and she spares them a glance, looking like she’d be seconds away from forcibly removing Zack from his close proximity. As it is, Kim nods at Trini to tell her it’s okay and Trini goes inside, but not without another backwards glance at them.

“Yeah,” she says, when it’s just the screen door open--when she can hear the TV being flipped on. “What the hell is going on?”

She pulls herself out of the car the rest of the way and closes the door before leaning against it.

Zack pulls a face that looks vaguely painful. “I don’t know! I was hoping you would!”

“Well, I don’t!”

On any other day, she’d be worried about her emotions going overboard--swirling through the air and straight for Trini, sitting just inside. She’d be worried about her finding out like this, but not today.

“Yeah,” Zack says. “I mean, Jason and I heard about it the other night--about someone attacking him, but…I didn’t know how badly Trini did a number on him.”

“ _Rita_ ,” Kim corrects harshly.

“The Green Ranger, actually,” he returns and then they just stand there, neither of them sure what to do.

.

Trini changes in her bedroom.

Kim changes down the hall.

Zack waits at the bottom of the steps.

When Trini comes out, her hair brushed, in clean clothes, Kim waits by Jason’s door with her hand tentatively outstretched. She’s wearing a pair of jeans she’d left behind a few sleepovers ago, that Trini must have thrown into her own laundry because they’re clean.

“It’s too hot for jeans,” Trini says when she sees her, eyes fixed on Kim’s pants and Kim swallows, her own eyes darting away.

“It’s all I’ve got here,” she says, and it’s not a lie.

“I’ve got shorts you can borrow.”

But--

“That’s okay.”

And it doesn’t seem like Trini necessarily wants to accept that, but Kim hardly leaves her any wiggle room. What it comes down to is the bandages on her knees, the ones she really needs to change soon because she might not be healing right and she wonders if it’s because of _how_ she got them or because her coin really does have one less person to pull strength from.

“Okay,” Trini concedes, but sounds reluctant. She takes Kim’s hand and it’s the only sign that there’s someone beside her, really. That Trini is there at all.

Because Kim can’t feel her, but she can feel Zack--humming distantly with some sort of buzzing, confused energy--as she drives them to the hospital.

.

“Hi, Trini,” Billy says when they meet him in the parking lot of the hospital. He’s standing by his mom’s van and he has his phone out in his hand in a way that makes Kim think he must have called Jason--probably off with his dad now--to tell him what’s going on.

Trini stiffens beside Kim, leaning a little into her arm and Kim lets her. Grabs her wrist.

“Hey, Billy,” Trini returns.

“Weren’t you in your armor when you…”

The question starts out wrong. That’s the problem and sometimes Billy doesn’t notice that kind of thing, but, this time, he seems to. Must catch the way Trini turns further into Kim, unwilling to hear the end of that question while she’s facing him.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly when Billy lurches forward, as if ready to apologize. “I don’t really remember all of it.”

Kim wants to ask what she _does_ remember--if Trini remembers holding her throat in her hand, ready to crush it. She presses her lips together.

“Whether you were in your armor or not, why would he think it was the Green Ranger who did this?” Zack asks and they’re heading towards the hospital doors now. “I mean, _he_ was the Green Ranger.”

“Yeah,” Kim cuts in, squeezing Trini’s hand. “But _he_ doesn’t know that.”

The first nurse they see gives them a sympathetic and slightly nervous look as she points them to Tommy’s room. Kim wonders, briefly, if Tommy is a one of those patients that is always clicking that buzzer to get help with fluffing his pillows or something.

It doesn’t seem unlikely.

They’re almost there--maybe two rooms away--when Trini whispers, “This is stupid,” and leans heavily into Kim’s arm.

“What?” she asks, but she doesn’t have to. She knows the answer.

“I don’t wanna see him, okay?”

Kim stops them, right there in the middle of the hallway, making the boys jerk back and hover a few feet away. Trini’s grip is fierce on Kim’s wrist and Kim is remembering the middle of the road--all that rubble, Rita laughing, and Tommy in front of them. Imagines Trini in her armor, bearing down on him.

“Okay,” Kim says as softly as she can manage. “You don’t have to.”

She turns her head and nods for the boys to continue. Billy looks worried, like he wants to fall back to see if they’re okay, but Zack nods and tugs him along, turning into Tommy’s room just ahead.

Trini is shaking, grabbing for her chest and Kim leads her to the nearest chair just a few doors down and sits her there, kneeling in front of her. She pulls Trini’s head down to her shoulder and says things like, “It’s okay,” and, “You’re okay,” and lots of other things she doesn't know for sure.

.

It passes eventually and it’s not as bad as the night before--as writhing in her bed, unable to _breathe_ \--but it’s still scary.

Kim sits beside her, holds one of Trini’s hands in both of hers as they wait, silently, for Zack and Billy to return with news, with _something_ helpful.

“Why did you forgive him?”

Her voice is quiet, reserved. Scratchy.

And Kim listens to it, always, with her breath held somewhere in her chest. Waiting for the sound to fall away before answering.

Tommy is inside this hospital with a broken arm, at least. Maybe something worse, too. She hadn’t read the article Zack pulled up on his phone all the way through before she’d gone in to tell Trini. She doesn’t really know.

And she didn’t. That’s what she wants to say. Not in any way that’s real, at least.

But forgiveness isn’t always about the victim and it feels useless to hate someone who played a pawn to the real enemy. It feels stupid and pointless and like a waste of time to even really resent Tommy for doing something he hadn’t meant to, but it happens.

It burns brightly in her fingertips and her chest sometimes when she looks at him--especially had in those first few weeks afterwards. But Tommy doesn’t remember anything he did.

And being around him without that constant worry that he _would_ remember--that it would come back or something--made it easy for Kim to pretend like she didn’t either. That what happened to her actually happened to somebody else entirely.

She smiled at him in the hallways towards graduation because he didn’t know her as anybody else and she greeted him at Zack’s party because he’d said, _Hey, how have you been?_ in this genuine way that hadn’t held any more weight than any other conversation with someone she just went to high school with.

But all of that sounds silly to her and she can only imagine how crazy it might sound to Trini--how it won’t fix anything or take away what Tommy did to her, the way he broke apart her family.

“I didn’t,” she says because it’s all she can manage, and Trini shoots her a disbelieving look. “No, really. I...I never forgave him for what he did to us--all of us. I won’t.”

It’s the first time they’ve said anything like this and Trini sucks in a harsh breath and grabs for her chest again, wincing.

“Are you okay?” Kim shoots forward, arms already around the other girl and Trini nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m okay.”

Kim wants to ask if she means it--wants to say _Promise?_ like some insecure kid who hasn’t learned object permanence yet.

But Billy and Zack are there, suddenly, their eyes cast low in the harsh fluorescent lighting and Kim looks up, the words disappearing before they even make it out of her mouth.

.

 **You:** Tommy thinks it was the green ranger that hurt him

 **Wally Cleaver:** yeah, billy called. what happened?

 **You:** i don’t know

 **You:** is it possible the coin changed Trini’s armor? Because

        everyone basically thinks the green ranger came back

        to throw a hissy fit

 **You:** **_Green Power Ranger attacks civilian, destroys pharmacy,_ **

**_frightens town. What brought him back will--_ **

**** _google.com_

.

The car ride back is silent. Even Zack is quiet, just messing with the window controls in the back seat of Kim’s car. Trini keeps her head pressed against the glass of the window and Kim can hear it knocking painfully on it during a couple of bumps by the house.

Billy drives close behind them, looking serious every time she glances in her rearview mirror at him.

She’s not sure what she’d expected--if they need to worry about being wanted by the National Guard again like they had last time, after being blamed for the destruction of the town--but this is somehow more confusing, even though a part of her is relieved. Trini doesn’t seem to share this outlook, though, and doesn’t look up until they’re parked in the driveway.

Jason’s car is back, parked crookedly with one tire on the brown grass of the lawn. The windows in the house are all flung open and everyone waits for Trini to get out of the car first--like some unspoken agreement that they should all be keeping an eye on her.

Kim aches and longs to reach out and take her into her arms again--to fix this somehow--but her knees are throbbing and Trini is already up the porch steps anyway.

“This is good, right?” Billy whispers, standing close behind Kim as she leads them inside. “Better that everyone thinks someone who doesn’t exist did this than Trini.”

Zack is shaking his head as he kicks his shoes off by the door.

Kim looks around the living room, at the dusty TV on and the couch with a couple of blankets strewn across it. Trini isn’t anywhere, which means she’s either upstairs or in another room. Normally, Kim would know which it was without having to think about it, but right then she has to prick her ears to hear Trini moving around in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Zack says. “I guess. I just don’t understand--”

Kim leaves to let the boys hash this out. She doesn’t have the patience for this sort of thing right now, doesn’t even think it really matters anyway.

Trini’s armor changing color is weird, yeah, and sort of helpful maybe for not getting them into trouble, but it’s not the sort of confusing thing that Kim really wants an explanation for. She’d rather stay in the dark if it means never revisiting that day. Even in conversation.

Trini isn’t in the kitchen anymore, but Jason is and Kim wonders why she always finds him here. Why she’s always reliving the same exact scenes, lines that have been blocked and long-since memorized when all she wants is for the curtain to drop.

She’s so tired of playing a part.

“She’s on the porch,” Jason says, like he doesn’t want to--like it’s some great secret he’s been trusted with.

The back door is open, and Kim can see Trini sitting there on the same steps where they first kissed, except the sun is up this time and Tommy Oliver isn’t in their living room. He’s across town in an arm cast being pampered in a hospital room.

“You’re not worried about the Tommy thing, right?” Kim asks and she supposes it’s possible that Trini can hear her, so her voice significantly drops volume halfway through the question.

Jason shakes his head, just slightly enough that she barely sees it. “No reason to be, I figure,” he tells her. “Should blow over in a week or two when people realize that the ‘Green Ranger’--” And he even uses little air quotes for that. “--has apparently had his fun and disappeared again.”

Kim nods. He has a point. People will probably assume that it was some sort of mistake--that he never came back or that they (the _real_ Power Rangers) defeated him so quickly no one really had time to notice it happening.

She can hear the birds outside and the wind rustling through the trees and, in a moment, she knows she’ll go out there and sit next to Trini and maybe try to find the strength to say what she needs to for once. But right now, she stays where she is and says, “You said you couldn’t feel her when she...Can you feel her now?” because she has to know.

Has to ask.

Jason leans back against the countertop, bracing himself against it, and he looks out the window where Kim knows he can probably just see Trini’s legs hanging off the steps. “I couldn’t feel any of you when we first met. Not until Billy…”

He trails off.

What happened to Billy still doesn’t come easily, doesn’t form well in any sentence the rest of them know how to say. She has a feeling it’s going to be the same with Trini now and she wonders how long it will be until they all have shadows tacked to their backs like this--moments the rest of them don’t know how to conjure into words for fear that it will send them back there.

“I couldn’t feel any of you until we morphed that first time.” Jason’s voice is gentle, soothing, and Kim is drawn towards him in a way she always has been, to that same steady kindness that beats so violently in his chest and out through his words. “And then I could and I just didn’t question it, I guess. I could just feel you guys. All the time. You know?”

Kim does know. She sticks her hands flat into her back pockets and leans heavily on her right foot, ignoring the ache of her knee as she does. “And now?”

“Your knees are hurting you,” Jason says. “I can feel _that_.”

A beat of silence.

Kim has to look away.

“Did you want me to look at them again?”

She shakes her head, still not looking at him. “I’m fine. I’ll heal. It’s just taking longer than usual.”

Another beat of silence and then Jason is coming closer and Kim holds her breath in preparation of the space invasion.

He doesn’t touch her though, and she does look up then because she’d been expecting him to. He just stands close and says, “What happened with Rita...It’s over now. Even Zordon says so,” and he sounds so convinced.

She opens her mouth to protest, to say, _How can we know that when we thought it was over last time, too_?

But he just shakes his head and then he _does_ touch her then--one gentle hand on the skin of her upper arm, palm hot as it rests there. “Whatever is going on with Trini and her... _connection_ . It’s gonna be okay. I know you don’t like to listen to me when I say that, but it _is._ ”

And he has said that before and been right.

He’d said it the day after Zack’s party a few weeks back, ice cream dribbling down his chin on that park bench as she’d told him what happened. As she’d said, _Trini and I...kissed_ , and then he’d just looked proud as he wiped his mouth. He’d said, _Yeah? Took you long enough. I'm happy for you._

And it had been okay. Things had been okay for exactly thirteen hours and then _this_ had started.

 _This_ here meaning the lack in her chest, that hollowed out feeling where she thinks Trini used to be but can’t recall anymore. She’s starting to wonder at how long it’s been there, that feeling. If it started just this morning or when Trini crushed that coin, or much earlier.

Like when Trini said, _I thought after Amanda that you…_

“Go talk to her.”

He says it in his leader voice--his _I’m-the-boss-of-you_ voice that she hates so much in training and appreciates so much in her everyday life, when she needs a good kick.

“Say the stuff you need to this time, Kim,” he presses on. “Because that’s what made our connection in the first place.”

He’s smiling in that Jason-way he does, blond hair getting so long it’s starting to curl on the ends again and she’ll have to remind him in a week to get a haircut because he always forgets.

Or she’ll have to cut in in the kitchen again, like she had last time.

Reaching up, she winds her finger into the curl of his bangs and springs it back, making him laugh.

Making her smile.

Making Trini look over her shoulder at them from the porch.

“Okay,” she says and he takes it as a promise.

.

“I keep finding you here,” Kim jokes and her knees creak sorely as she takes a seat beside Trini.

“So it would seem,” Trini breathes out.

The words don’t seem heavy and the shadows are getting longer and longer in the afternoon sun, spreading out until they fade into just darkness in the grass up ahead. Kim watches the leaves of the trees in the backyard blow distantly in the breeze, spinning on the edges of the twigs and looking ready to fly right off. Presses her hands into the wood beneath her until she feels a pleasant detachment from everything around her.

Until it feels normal to not feel Trini beside her.

“You going to jump me again?” Trini asks a second later and Kim puffs out a laugh, unexpected and sudden.

“What?” she asks. “You’re the one who jumped _me_.”

Trini scoffs. “Hardly. You started it, Hart.”

“You did,” Kim counters, indignant. “With your romantic _run away with me_ talk.”

Now Trini is laughing, her teeth a brilliant, unexpected shine that Kim can’t look away from. And her hands are pressed underneath her thighs to keep them from messing with her bandages, but Kim wants to touch her. She wants to slide her fingers around Trini’s hips and slip them up to feel the heated skin of her back, grip the curves of her shoulder blades under her skin.

She settles for watching her, watching Trini turn her head with that grin.

Zack and Billy are talking inside. Jason has joined them. Kim feels it with a tug in her chest and knows immediately what they’re talking about without being able to hear them, imagines Billy describing Tommy’s cast or hospital room or his take on what happened to him.

“What are they talking about?” Trini asks, and Kim wonders if she can feel it, too.

“I don’t know,” Kim says, because she doesn’t know the details. She half-expects Trini to call her out on it, but she doesn’t. She just nods and looks away.

Their hands come together after a moment, fingers tangling loosely, and then Trini is leaning her head onto Kim’s shoulder. Trini is saying, “I--” and then cutting herself off.

They need to talk. She’s been saying it, thinking it, for weeks but right now doesn’t seem like the right moment. And she’s scared of that look in Trini’s eyes that she keeps catching--that glimmer like she’s three feet from running again. For good this time.

Kim just wants all of this to be easy. She wants a fair game for once.

When Kim finally kisses her again--for the fifth real time ever--her heart is pounding and Trini gasps into her mouth like it hurts. Kim’s hand finds her chest--that flat plane under her collarbones--and she presses her palm there, flat feeling the thump of Trini’s heart beneath her skin.

Kim whispers, “Can you still feel me?” into Trini’s mouth, against the warm skin of her neck as her lips trail down, and Trini hesitates before nodding.

Just long enough that Kim thinks she may be lying.

..


	2. come on, darling, won't you let me turn you on?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening: "The Fool" by Ryn Weaver or "Around U" by MUNA (and like a thousand other songs i listen to bc music is life/inspiration)

...

And anyway, she’s still so unsure. Still so uncertain, even though everyone else seems convinced it’s all going to be right as rain soon. Trini doesn’t have another episode like the first one all day, but that only serves to make Kim feel even more useless.

Like something worse is coming.

Even though Zordon said it was nothing. That pain would mean _healing._

More than anything she just wants to talk about this, whatever it is. All of it.

Wants to knock down whatever this wall is between her and Trini that’s keeping them from bridging this distance.

Because she loves her. She really does. In such a careful, aching way that she doesn’t know how to breathe sometimes and she nearly lost her, too. Thought she’d die.

Thought both of them might.

And she wants to tell Trini what that was like, but she’s so scared of piling too much onto her plate. On anyone’s plate.

Feels like she maybe deserves it. So she lets it slide.

Yet here Trini is, sitting next to her on this couch--legs thrown over Kim’s lap, their fingers tangled together, watching Joy drag Sadness through Long-Term Memory and smiling. Laughing. Looking so at peace.

Like everything is normal.

“Got something on my face?” Trini asks and it makes Kim jump and immediately look away.

She shakes her head, doesn’t look back, but Trini squeezes her hand and bounces her legs a little. Brushes the toe of her sock across Kim’s jean-clad legs. Right above the bandages.

“Why are you staring then, creeper?” she whispers back.

Zack shoots them a dirty look from the beanbag on the floor and she thinks he may already be crying even though they haven’t gotten to Bing-Bong yet. Trini sticks her tongue out at him and looks back at Kim.

Briefly, Kim is able to hate herself. Wants to apologize for wiping that smile off of Trini’s face, but she shakes her head instead.

“I just,” she starts, “I like to look at you.”

Trini laughs and throws her head back and for a moment everything is as it was before Tommy. “That was the cheesiest thing in the world, Hart,” she says, but she’s smiling and beautiful and alive.

“You love it.”

Trini smiles. Her fingers lift and tap out a rhythm on Kim’s knuckles.

“Hey, peanut gallery,” Zack cuts in and they look over at him to find him trying to hide his smirk long enough to be annoyed. “Shut it. Some of us are trying to watch this.”

Which is ridiculous, because Jason is asleep in his chair and snoring a little and Billy is sitting on the other side of the couch playing a game on his phone.

“ _You_ shut it,” Kim fires back, and she swears she can feel it in her chest when Trini laughs again.

.

 **smol fry:** Coming back or…?

 **You:** mom caught me. discussing “room cleaning habits”. should b able

        2 leave soon

 **smol fry:** Cool. When you get here, we’re gonna go over some basic

   grammar and spelling, okay?

 **smol fry:** It’s getting out of hand.

 **You:** ;)

.

It feels like years since Kim last saw her bedroom.

There’s a pile of dirty laundry on the floor by the basket and clean clothes her mother must have washed and folded, waiting primly on her bed--a stack of online college brochures tucked beneath them. A pair of shoes kicked off right by the door so she can’t even open it all the way.

She opens the window because the air is thick, crosses the room and forces it open to stare out at the backyard for a moment. At the tops of the trees and the town shining, brilliant and distant against the hazy purple sky.

She sinks down on the window seat, setting the first aid kit from the bathroom out and shimmying out of her jeans to inspect Jason’s wrapping job.

The gauze is coming off, loose from all the bending and straightening she’s made her legs do all day and she hisses out in pain as she pulls them off, then again when she sees the damage.

It’s less than it was before and she wonders if Trini is anything to do with it. If her connection is coming back and that’s somehow making Kim heal a little faster than she was before.

Or it’s not and that’s why it’s taking longer than it used to.

She feels heavy. Weighted.

Like there’s an edge to this happiness that she hadn’t expected. Like being in a dark room that you know has a curtain somewhere--a curtain that would let in the light if you could just _find_ it and open it.

Kim presses her heels into the soft threads of the carpet as she lightly taps some Neosporin onto the swollen, torn skin of her knees, wincing as it cools there. Feels the buzz of her phone in her back pocket.

Thinks of Trini across town. Waiting for her.

She thinks it should be strange that it’s been two years and thoughts like that never really seemed to stop once they started. When they’d first met, she’d hardly even recognized Trini--having been too caught up in her own world to really take note of her. And now?

Her phone buzzes again, more insistently, and when she pulls it out to look, it’s a message from Jason.

A message that says, _hey if ur not coming back i’m gonna stay with Trini for the night okay?_

She stares at it for a long time, hates the way the words make her skin crawl--not at him, but at what this implies.

At the fact that none of them are quite ready to leave Trini alone just yet. That Jason, in all of his optimistic glory, is still frightened that something bigger is at stake here.

At the fear that has taken up residence in the back of her neck, making her muscles quake vaguely with every single thought. The fear that they’re going to lose her for good in one way or another. That Rita will come back yet again or Trini will collapse or maybe she’ll just stop loving Kim back one day and it’ll tear them all apart.

Because it seems, for them at least, that everything comes to an end eventually.

Kim shakes her head and types back, _leaving in a minute. spoon someone else_

She waits a minute. Watches the _Delivered_ change to _Read_ and then smiles when Jason sends back the upside-down smiley face.

It takes her three minutes to pack and finish wrapping her knees. She doesn’t need much.

Her parents are already in their bedroom and they’ve stopped asking questions--perhaps relieved, at least, that, if she’s going to “ruin” her life by not going to college, she’s not going to spend that time loafing around at home.

.

The drive to Jason and Trini’s house takes exactly thirteen minutes at this time of night. Kim has it memorized by now. Gets stuck at the same lights, drives the same exact speed, and makes it there by 10:23.

The lights are off downstairs, but Trini’s bedroom light is still on.

Upstairs, Trini is sitting on her bed with her back to the door just kind of hunched over and Kim is positive that she hasn’t been heard yet. Because this looks like such a private moment. Something she wasn’t meant to intrude on and now she has and--

“Hey.”

And it’s like a switch has been flipped. Trini is smiling now. A little happier. A little lighter.

Her shoulders a little straighter.

The fan in the corner of her bedroom blows her hair away from her face, sending a few curls back and forth like they’re trying to take off and Kim is struck with the thought that this girl she’s seeing--this smile and that freedom and lightness--might be part of an act. And she’s too afraid to ask because she’s not sure if she really wants to know whether it really is or not.

She doesn’t want to be right.

“Took you long enough.”

Trini gets up then and crosses the room, slides that bag off of Kim’s shoulder and kisses her cheek in a way that makes Kim feel so _useless_. She’s frozen in place and it’s probably one of the more embarrassing moments she’s ever experienced.

And she’s been feeling that uselessness a lot lately but it feels most poignant right then, different somehow.

“Yeah,” she manages quietly. “Sorry about that.”

She offers a small smile that seems to placate Trini for a moment, but only a moment. An edge of something else there--perhaps the same fear Kim has been feeling for so long it feels imminent and inexorable.

She changes in the corner while Trini presses a pillow over her head, makes jokes about not looking, and by the time she’s done, when they’re lying in bed with the lights off laughing and tangled together, she’s practically forgotten all about it again.

.

 **Zackary Taylor** invited you to his event **Party Bitches Take Two**

**JUL    Party Bitches Take Two**

**4** Tues 7:30 PM - 1112 Buckley Drive, Angel Grove, California

William Cranston and Jason Scott are going.

.

“You got it, too?” Trini says the next morning when she sees Kim glaring at her phone.

“He realizes that’s today, right?” Kim asks and Trini just shrugs, rolls herself to the side to get out of her bed and just stands there for a moment before stretching.

Kim puts her phone aside, tucking it under her pillow to watch, dazedly, as Trini stretches her arms back over her head.

They’ve done this a thousand times before. Kim had practically lived in Trini’s house with her during the second half of their junior year--snuck through the window almost every night and then back out once Trini’s dad left for work--and then Trini had pretty much moved in with her that summer. But something about this is different, waking up together this time.

“You stare a lot, huh? That new?”

Kim pushes herself up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. “No, it’s not. But you would stare too if you had my view,” she says, feeling brave and Trini looks flustered for about two seconds and then Kim is on her feet and kissing her before she loses anymore courage.

Trini kisses her back, immediately. Always.

When she pulls apart, nuzzles her nose into the curve of Kim’s chin, she sighs and says, “Zack is here.”

Kim tries to listen, perks her ears up and tries to hear past the fan in the corner to see if she can actually hear him downstairs, but she can’t. She can feel him, though--that manic energy he’s practically imbued with.

So Trini can feel it, too.

She doesn’t ask. She changes her clothes and goes downstairs.

.

“We need at least five more pounds of ground beef, dude.”

“We’re not feeding an army, Zack. There’s gonna be, like, twelve people here. At the most.”

“Yo, you haven’t _seen_ my mom put away burgers before. When she has her appetite, there’s no stopping her. You gotta make more.”

Zack and Jason are bickering in the kitchen, Zack’s head buried deep in the fridge while Jason looks flustered by the sink.

Trini’s hand is warm on Kim’s wrist and she doesn’t pull away. “Keep it down, guys. Jesus Christ. People are trying to sleep.”

It’s eleven o’clock and not nearly early enough for that to be a good argument, but no one seems eager to really fight her on it.

“I have a party to plan, Trini. Good parties don’t plan themselves!”

Zack’s voice echoes in the fridge, bouncing off their half-empty carton of milk and a bag of avocados that’s buried in one of the crisper drawers. Jason shoots Kim an exasperated look that seems to plead for help, but she doesn’t have any to offer.

Not anything other than, “We’re not having a party tonight, Zack,” and it only sounds half-firm because she’s not sure she really has the willpower to argue.

Zack seems to pick up on that, though, because he comes swinging into an upright position and closes the fridge door. “You guys shit all over my last party, too, and look where it got you.”

He wags a finger between them and Kim can see Trini look away out of the corner of her eye.

She regrets a lot of things, really, but mostly she regrets talking about it with Jason in the house that afternoon before Zack had dragged them all to that club. She regrets Zack having a key and the way she’d said, _Because the last time there was music and dancing involved, Trini and I sucked face and never really talked about it_ , and turning to find Zack standing by the front door with a wide grin on his face.

Mostly, though, she thinks she regrets not finding time in the past forty-eight hours to tell Trini, _Oh, yeah, Zack and Jason know. Would you like to do the honors of telling Billy? Maybe take out an ad in the paper?_

Trini’s fingers loosen around Kim’s list and, yeah. She may have to do some damage control over this.

“Besides,” he continues, “Trini’s family already RSVP’d.”

Now Trini looks back up, lightly roaring, “They _what_?” and making both Kim and Jason wince.

.

“So…” Trini starts after Zack practically runs out of the kitchen to call Billy and have him add something to his shopping list.

Kim braces herself for what’s coming next.

What she has to say.

“Yeah, Zack knows,” she says, her voice low and meek. Jason is leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed and he’s staring at the floor and shifting awkwardly. “Um...So does Jason.”

Jason waves without looking up.

She expects anger or something worse--thinks it would be a lot easier if she could just reach out and feel it so it wouldn’t be a surprise--but what she gets from Trini is this ambivalent look she can’t really put her finger on.

“Oh,” Trini says and Kim opens her mouth to try and spit out enough apologies to make this seem lesser than what it is, but she doesn’t get the chance. Instead, Trini just says, “Billy knows, too.”

Jason finally looks up, frowning in confusion. Distress and a hint of betrayal drifts across the room from him to her and then it dissipates as a look of understanding comes over his features.

Billy would never reveal someone else’s secrets.

“Jason and I already had a nice heart-to-heart about it,” Trini says, but there must be something more to the story because Jason hasn't mentioned it to Kim and his face immediately turns bright red when she says this. “So, I knew he knew.”

Kim wants to ask for specifics, but it doesn't seem like the time, so she just nods, just a bob of her head and then Trini makes a face. “This party is gonna suck,” she says and Kim almost hates the way her nose is scrunched at the mere prospect of having her entire immediate family descending on her new home in just a few hours.

She can’t fix everything, but she can try to fix this.

.

“Why are you letting him do this?” she hisses at Jason as she watches him scrape up some black gunk off the grill in the backyard.

She hadn’t even known he’d had that monstrous thing and she has half-a-mind to tell him off for using things left behind by previous tenants, but she thinks, _One thing at a time,_ and doesn’t.

“As if I could stop Zack from doing something he’s already made a Facebook event for,” he returns, rocking back on his heels and looking up at her.

Inside, she can hear Zack and Trini talking, but she can’t make out what they’re saying. Trini’s probably still berating him for inviting her family without asking permission, though. At least, that’s what they’d been discussing when she’d been inside.

“Look,” Jason says and he drops his weird scrubbing brush onto the grill before looking up with an expression she’s sure is meant to express how much business he really means, “I think it’s a good idea.”

“You do, huh?” She crosses her arms.

Two can play at that game.

Jason shrugs. “I mean, the last time we needed to... _bond_ or whatever, we had that bonfire up at the cliffs.”

And they _had,_ but Kim hadn’t actually come clean about anything then. That was before, and she’d like to think she’s different, now, but she’s not positive she has a right to say that. Not when she has yet to have a real conversation with Trini about everything they’ve been neglecting.

“So, what?” she asks. “Some big Fourth of July party with our families is gonna fix Trini’s connection to us?”

It’s possible that she says it too loud, that Trini is able to hear her inside, but she doesn’t drop her volume again. She stands her ground.

“It’s worth a shot, right? If something _is_ really wrong.”

“Shouldn’t we just _talk_ to her or something?” Kim counters. “It’s not as if it was the bonfire itself that fixed us back then. It was--”

She cuts herself off at _Billy dying,_ because it’s not the right time to bring that up, to fill the space between her and Jason with those words.

A dark look crosses Jason’s face, as if a cloud has passed in front of the sun, and it feels wrong to make him look like that when he’s wearing that _Ask Me About My Cow_ shirt Trini got him as a joke last Christmas. She looks down instead, inspects the dirt below her shoes and toes at the grass.

“I know,” he says eventually. “And I’ll talk to her, okay? I was already planning on it. What happened it...I can’t help but feel partially responsible--”

Kim looks back up and opens her mouth to protest, but never gets the chance because he cuts her off.

“--and I _know_ it’s not anyone’s fault. But...We can’t just brush this stuff under the rug, okay? We’re a team. We need to be on the same page.”

This is one of his patented Hope-Speeches. She’s heard a thousand of them in the past two years, but this is the first one, she thinks, that has been directly pointing towards her.

“You gotta talk to her, too, Kim.”

She hates that he knows her so well. She really does.

Kim looks away again.

He goes back to scrubbing the grill and Kim can only bear standing out there for another two minutes before she goes back inside.

.

Billy shows up around two o’clock with five Target bags worth of supplies--including fireworks, which makes Kim nervous on principle.

“Billy, my man,” Zack says, greeting him at the door. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“You’re not going to be the one grilling those burgers, are you?” Billy asks, shifting nervously as he hands some of the bags to Zack.

Kim sits on the couch with Trini watching something vapid on the TV and she looks up as he says this, watches the way he darts his eyes to her carefully as if to gauge her own level of concern about Zack being put in charge of cooking.

“Nah, man. Jason is Grill-Dad.”

Zack takes the bags into the kitchen and Billy nods carefully after him.

Says, “Okay. Good.”

Trini smiles at her as he disappears, but it’s short-lived because Jason comes in a moment later and says, “Hey, your family Coke or Pepsi people? ‘Cause Billy only got Coke Zero.”

.

There just doesn’t seem like a good enough time. Kim thinks the law of probability is bullshit and she’s grumbling about it an hour after Jason fires up the grill as Billy goes around the yard hanging red, white, and blue streamers from the branches of the trees.

Because the law of probability would have you believe that, at some point, something has to give.

It would have you thinking that if you flipped a coin and it was heads three times in a row, then it’s that much more likely to be tails the next time. But each incident is independent. Isolated.

It holds no weight when it comes to the next individual flip.

She’s cleaning up the living room, just straightening up the cushions, folding the blankets on the couch and Trini is doing something similar in the kitchen, in a much more manic and less controlled way.

Kim can hear her ordering Zack to scrub down the sink as he complains.

Says something like, “Jesus, Trin, your mom isn’t gonna ground you if she can’t see her reflection in the faucet.”

Kim is thinking about what Jason said in the kitchen--what he’s _always_ saying--and how stupid is it that she can never seem to just take his advice? Why is she still trying to fit into this person that doesn’t face their mistakes? That doesn’t talk about the things that matter?

When did she become spineless?

She’s wondering about this and grumbling about how stupid she must be, about how the odds of her ever getting better seem slimmer by the moment. Even more slim than the chances of either her or Trini catching a break for once.

Anyway, she’s not really expecting it when she finds it. This long letter tucked under the cushion of the couch.

It’s like a scene from a movie. Kim can imagine the piano music swelling in the background.

The low point is coming.

It’s this folded-up thing that looks worn out, three pages long, and Kim doesn’t want to read it but feels like she’s contractually obligated to carry on the drama of the whole thing.

So it’s open before she really notices.

.

She sits in the living room, the letter open in her hands. In the kitchen, she can hear Zack talking.

Zack saying, “You feel a little better.”

And Trini saying, “Yeah, I guess.”

Then, “Zordon must have been right. Nothing to worry about.”

Trini’s laugh sounds like her--carefree and light like it used to be. Like Kim hasn’t heard it in months now. Not really.

“Don’t let him hear you say that. Or Jason. Jason might have a fucking coronary.”

Zack snorts. Trini berates his scrubbing technique.

Then he says, “Wouldn’t want to lose Mom that way, would we?”

So Zack can feel Trini. He can feel her in the way Kim can’t.

Either Zordon was right or Zack did something Kim couldn’t do to fix it.

And she remembers Zack leaning over the couch that night after Trini came back. She’d pretended to be asleep and she hadn’t really heard him anyway. Thought, maybe, that she heard the phrase, “--care about you, Trin.”

“It would make a good story at least,” Trini jokes and the letter is still open on her lap.

Kim glances down at it--those scrawled, slanted letters. Her name on the top. The loop of Trini’s _K_ ’s and how each line is that much closer to the _goodbye_ written at the end.

She feels a tightness in her chest. Some hollowed out feeling, like it maybe used to hold something important and has since been emptied out.

.

The letter gets tucked back underneath the couch.

The living room is clean and they’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before people start showing up.

Kim spends them crying in the upstairs bathroom--back against the tub, knees drawn close to her chest.

Thankful, really, for the first time in two days that Trini can’t feel her.

.

 **Taylor Slow:** wtf weirdo where did u go?

 **Wally Cleaver:** hey Trini’s bros are asking for you

 **smol fry:** Hey, you okay? You sorta disappeared on us.

.

She can hear everyone downstairs, just through the floors and the walls. Zack is talking at too high a volume and she can hear Trini’s little brothers laughing as they run around with Billy. A mingling of discordant noises she hasn’t heard before, isn’t familiar with, but makes her feel such a keen sense of longing that she’s positive everyone else can feel it too.

Everyone but Trini.

Like some kind of flood gate that’s been building up pressure for God-only-knows how long and is finally, finally at its breaking point. And it doesn’t matter how many times she tries to stop the flow with her hands or her fists or leaving the room and making excuses for not bringing it up--it’s finally caught up with her.

Trini on the cliff.

Trini in the water. Lifeless.

Trini with her hands around Kim’s throat.

She can’t breathe.

Someone knocks on the door and the fact that she doesn’t know who it is tells her exactly who it is. She’d know if it were Zack. She’d recognize his erratic energy anywhere. And Jason would send some soothing aura of peace her way. Some worry, too. Billy’s calm would practically be palpable. But all she feels is that emptiness.

That lack.

“Kim?” Trini asks outside the door, her voice afraid, like she doesn’t want to be answered. “Are you in there?”

She’s silent.

Kim is busy trying to wipe her eyes. She gets to her feet and inspects her reflection, hates the way her eyeliner started to run and she rubs her thumbs under her eyes to wipe it away.

“Hey, Kim...Baby, I’m really worried about you.”

The term of endearment tightens in the back of Kim’s throat.

She’s being stupid.

She’s being so, so stupid and she knows it’s even _more_ stupid, somehow, to go out the window--to open it and slip down the side of the roof and off into the front yard.

But she does it anyway.

.

It’s in the dim light outside--the way the sun is slanting and families are outside on their lawns, in their backyards; kids cannonballing into the deep end of the pool while their dads crack open beers and their moms make sure everyone is getting enough to eat--that Kim realizes she doesn’t have anywhere to go.

No real plan.

That she was afraid to open the door and see Trini’s face, see the escape route she’d detailed in that letter addressed to her in the darkness of her eyes; that future away from Angel Grove where she isn’t anything to them anymore. Not a part of their team.

Because it feels like Trini has gotten so far ahead of wherever they used to be--where they _were_ before everything with Tommy--and Kim is still straggling behind, struggling to catch her breath.

The neighbors just across the street--the nice elderly couple who always smile at her when she pulls into Jason and Trini’s driveway--are out front with their grandkids. They wave.

Kim doesn’t wave back. Can’t find it in herself.

And she left her keys in the house--in her bag on the floor of Trini’s bedroom--so she doesn’t even so much as look at her car.

She just runs.

.

There’s no real reason to find herself at the football field, but that’s where she goes.

In the grass, under the stadium lights--switched off until late night practices start up next month--she looks up at the stands. Plants her feet firmly in the astroturf.

Tries to imagine what would have happened if she’d gone downstairs.

If she was the kind of person who deserved to have something good in her life.

She imagines opening the door to Trini’s worried eyes, sweeping her into an embrace that might be enough to anchor her, to make her _stay_ and stop thinking about leaving. Always leaving.

She imagines Trini’s brothers with sparklers in the backyard and Trini’s dad clapping Jason on the back as he grills them all burgers. Trini’s mom talking with Zack’s and Zack smiling. Zack giving Diego and Alex one noogie each and then chasing them around the yard.

She imagines Trini in the evening glow, the way the shadows fall across her face. Imagines kissing each curve of her nose, the line of her jaw, the contour of her neck, as they sit in the grass. Imagines Trini shoving her, saying, _Don’t get any mustard on me, freak,_ and laughing.

And it would be perfect.

It would be everything Kim ever wanted.

Everything she doesn’t deserve.

Because Rita said, _You don’t make her happy...not happy enough to forget me_ , and if Trini hadn’t come to her about _this_ then there’ll be other stuff in the future. Stuff she won’t share.

Stuff that will spiral out of control until Kim loses everyone she loves. Until she inevitably loses Trini or herself and all because she doesn’t know how to voice this fear.

This disgusting, overwhelming terror that, at some point, took the steering wheel of her life and started swerving her back and forth, threatening to topple her off the road.

The football field hasn’t changed. The lines are faded, though, and it’s hotter than it usually was whenever she stood on it, whenever she stood there in that stupid polyester uniform, yelling up into the stands.

She doesn’t look at her phone--knows that she probably has at least a handful of missed calls by now.

Knows how dumb she’s being and that eventually this dramatic low point will pass--because there’s always an act three in the redemption arc, some second chance at being the deserving heroine.

In a few minutes, she’ll feel like herself again.

The law of probability will work out in her favor and, for once, she won’t have to play the role of the anti hero--the lancer who is always filling in the amoral gaps in the team.

She’s tired of being in a story.

Something’s gotta give.

Kim is thinking that--lining up her mistakes and deciding that it would make sense if Trini did leave. If everyone left. If she never got a chance to convince them to stay, that it’s good that Rita didn’t kill her because she deserves to live her life.

This life of a useless, high school graduate living at home with nothing but a couple of pilot lessons to look forward to.

And then something explodes a few streets over.

.

The light is nearly gone when she gets there--the edges of the sunset creeping over the pink of her armor--and with her visor down, it looks like midnight.

She’s not really sure what she’s looking for--if it’s another house fire or something more dire. Something like Rita, back in her own body and choking the life out of Trini or something.

So she follows the sound as close as she can and finds herself standing in the middle of some residential block party in full armor watching a handful of mischievous teenagers (as supervised by their half-drunk parents) setting off fireworks in someone’s front lawn.

Fireworks.

She’d forgotten about those.

They set off another one before anyone else sees her and she’s so distracted by it--by the explosion itself--that she hardly even realizes that she should be retreating.

And then, of course, the law of probability (or maybe that’s just where she’s deciding to put the blame because it’s easier than blaming herself) bites her in the ass.

“Wow!”

“Wait--”

“--is that?”

Kim hears them before she sees them, which is a true feat, really, because these stupid helmets really block her ears. And then she sees them, of course. Whole families staring at her and pointing.

The guy on grill duty has dropped his tongs on the grass and the dog tied to the tree just past him has even gone silent. The boys by the fireworks stare, open-mouthed, and Kim should leave, right?

She should get the hell out of there before any of them--

“Are you…Are you one of those Power Rangers?”

The voice is right next to her and Kim swivels her head, her heart thumping painfully--erratically--in her chest. It’s a girl she vaguely recognizes from school--from some class she’s long since forgotten the curriculum for--and she’s staring at Kim and way too close--just a couple feet away, really--so she takes a cautionary step back.

Jason doesn’t like them to talk while they’re in their armor--too scared that someone will recognize their voice or something. And that’s usually fine--or _was_ at least before her and Zack started their little side project--because they were typically too busy saving the city to make small talk with the locals.

Right now, she feels frozen. Unsure of what the protocol is here, because she _needs to leave_ but with the “Green Ranger” rumors being thrown about, it’s probably not in her best interest to act shady enough to show up at a block party and then immediately run away when someone sees her.

She settles for nodding.

The girl--Katie, maybe?--grins widely, looking half-crazy with glee and she looks over at the others at the party before immediately turning to Kim again. “What are you doing here?” Katie asks next, blue eyes wide in curiosity. “Are they...Is this ‘cause Isaac and Sammy set off the fireworks? Cause I’ll tell them to stop, if you want.”

That’s certainly not the kind of thing you can answer in gesture.

Kim thinks Jason will forgive her for talking.

(Maybe not for jumping out of a window and never fully discussing the breadth and depth of her emotional turmoil, but for talking? Yeah.)

“Um,” Kim starts, and then realizes how dumb she sounds. She coughs a little, hand going towards her mouth instinctively before she realizes that her mouth is covered by her mask right now. “Just...be careful.”

Katie nods seriously, but she’s still smiling. Her hand darts out, like she wants to touch Kim which Kim thinks she maybe understands on some level--why _not_ touch the alien superhero you don’t know?--but she steps back immediately, thinking of Billy morphing that first time and Zack’s touch making the armor retreat.

“I’ll make sure they are,” Katie says. She pulls her hand away and takes a step further back, which Kim appreciates.

Kim nods one more time and then turns to run, turns to leave.

She starts off--through the houses and towards that little man-made forest on the other side of the road--and she’s so eager to get away that she nearly smacks headfirst into Trini, standing right there on the sidewalk.

.

“Kim, what the hell are you doing?”

She’s only heard Trini this angry maybe twice. Hurt, three or four times. But actually, viscerally angry?

Twice.

When Zack first made off with his Zord, nearly killing them all upon his return, and when the hard drive on her laptop busted in the middle of writing a paper for Senior English and she’d had to start over.

This would be time number three.

They’re almost back to the house and Kim’s armor is gone--leaving her in just her jeans and that t-shirt she’d been wearing before. Her skin is hot, slick, and she wants to disappear into the ground or keep running.

“You climb out my fucking window and then go gallivanting around town in your armor hitting on hot girls at block parties?”

And, okay. Only part of that is true.

She doesn’t answer. Thinks it may be in her best interest to not say anything.

It’s gotta be pretty hard to dig your grave any further if you just don’t open your mouth.

They’re at the house now and the sun is almost down. The city fireworks are going to start soon and she can hear Zack in the backyard, telling some elaborate story to the others. Can hear Billy laughing.

They stop walking by the porch and Kim finally looks at Trini, winces when she sees the red-rim of the other girl’s eyes, and looks away again.

“Are you gonna answer me or are you just gonna ignore that I’m talking?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Kim fires back, but it doesn’t sound like she’s sorry. Not even to her. “What do you want me to say? That I’m an asshole? We both already know that.”

It hits her then that her and Trini have never fought. Not like this.

She’s seen Trini mad twice and it was never at her. Not even after everything with Tommy. They hadn’t argued. They’d just stopped talking for a while.

This is new. This is scary.

Trini looks like she might cry again.

She can’t do this.

“Can we just go join the party? Be normal for a change?”

It sounds accusatory and Kim hates herself. She really does.

Wants to pull Trini into her arms and fix this rift between them that’s been growing steadily. Wants to beg her to stay.

_Please just stay._

Trini shakes her head, crosses her arms, and looks away. “We need to talk about this, Kim.”

“We need to talk about a lot of things you keep avoiding,” Kim fires back and the venom in her voice is from years of repression.

Years of not saying what they need to and all of it has built to this--to them standing on this lawn not looking at each other.

Because Trini isn’t the only one at fault here. They both are.

They’ve been carefully avoiding a lot of things and now, it seems, there’s too much already under the rug to just sweep it back under.

“ _We_ keep avoiding,” she corrects.

“Well, we’re not doing it here,” Trini says and her voice is soft, her fingers warm as they tighten around Kim’s wrist.

She pulls her inside and up the stairs until they’re in her bedroom with the door closed, the window open so that Kim can hear the others outside.

“Go ahead,” Trini says and she stands in front of Kim, in front of the bed. “Talk.”

Kim finds herself frozen, the words she wants to say dissolving on the tip of her tongue and it’s always her and Trini in bedrooms, it seems.

Always the two of them hiding behind the ghosts of everything they never had the courage to say.

“Are you really going to leave?” Kim asks, bile rising up in her throat at the thought of that letter with her name at the top in the living room, under the cushion.

Trini’s face softens, those hard edges fading away and she looks like she wants to take a step forward. “What?” she asks and Kim sighs.

Looks away.

“I found your letter,” she admits. “The one in the living room. The one where you said it’s too hard and you can’t do this anymore.”

Silence then. Kim thinks, in a movie, there’d be music playing. Starting out soft.

Trini breathes and Kim feels empty still and frustrated. “What letter?” she asks, but Kim thinks she must know, so she just looks up and meets her eyes without real answer. “What letter, Kim?”

It’s silent for a second and then Trini sighs, realization crossing her features in the darkness.

She says, “No...I--”

But Kim cuts her off with a firm, “Then why write it?”

Trini sighs again and stuffs her hands into her pocket. “It...It’s not a recent letter, Kim. It’s…I found it when I was unpacking my stuff and...” She trails off and then kicks her foot at the floor. “When everything with Tommy happened, I...I didn’t want to be here anymore,” she says. “You weren’t...You didn’t see how bad it was for a while after that. My mom...it was like she couldn’t bear to look at me. And my dad just didn’t care. He didn’t intervene or even try and my brothers...They didn’t understand.”

Kim is looking at her now, steps forward and then stops herself. Leans into the mattress and sits down instead.

“I wanted to get out of here. Just...I didn’t want to come back. So I wrote that letter to you because I…”

“Because you thought I told them?” Kim asks and it tastes wrong. Those words leave her mouth dry.

Trini shakes her head. “At first I…I did at first, I guess, but Kim, I know...I know you wouldn’t do that to me.”

“How do you know that?” Kim asks. “I did it to Amanda.”

It’s silly that this is the first time they’ve talked about it. That this is what it took for her to bring up the way it felt to not be trusted--how deeply it cut. How that was the moment when she realized she might never be worthy of change or good things or anything close to grace.

“Yeah,” Trini says, softly. “But...I trust you, Kim. I do.”

“Why, though? You shouldn’t.”

That’s when Trini snaps, stepping forward and pulling her hands out of her pockets. “Because I’m in love with you, you enormous jackass.”

Kim’s mouth snaps closed and she probably looks too shocked to be considered attractive in that moment, but she’s positive it doesn’t matter.

It’s like she thought she’d dreamt Trini saying it that first time--thought Rita was lying maybe, in Trini’s body--but now all of it has been lain to rest.

“I...I love you and I…” Trini continues and she’s closer, still, but not close enough. “I think you’re sort of... _it_ for me, Kim. I was scared of it for a long time. I was...I thought I was trying to save what we had, when all I wanted was to…”

She looks away briefly and Kim wonders if she’s allowed to reach out and touch her, but decides that she wouldn’t be able to stand for that long on her shaking legs anyway.

“ I have a hard time talking about this stuff,” Trini continues a moment later, “because I keep expecting you to wake up and realize I’m not worth it, I guess, but...I trust you, Kim. I trust that you won’t do that. And if I can trust you...I need you to trust me. That I won’t leave. That...that I’ll do everything in my power to come back to you every single time.”

Kim’s gaping now, which is probably even less attractive. Her tongue darts out to wet her dry lips.

“Can you maybe say something?” Trini says, sounding nervous. “Because you’re starting to freak me out.”

“How did you find me out there?” Kim asks. She has to know, because she hadn’t been close to the house and it’s not like Trini could have tracked her phone or anything.

Trini rolls her eyes. “I felt you, dumbass. I feel you right now, too.”

And there it is. That edge of the curtain drawing back, the sunlight streaming in. Kim feels her chest open up like it’s ready to swallow her whole, but it doesn’t feel empty anymore and she’s not sure if it ever did. If maybe she imagined that part.

“Are you...Is it fixed, then?” she asks, remembers Jason’s promise to talk to her. Zack saying in the kitchen that he could feel her, too.

Trini shrugs. “I don’t know how broken it was in the first place. I think we...I think all of us have a tendency to psych ourselves out when things get rough.”

“Okay.”

“And I think you and I especially tend to feel a lot of the same things. Maybe you felt me and you didn’t realize it because it just felt like...you.”

Kim nods, letting that idea roll over in her mind. Lets herself consider it for a moment.

Trini sighs again and moves closer. “Did you have anything you wanted to add to the discussion?”

And Kim does, of course, because the floodgates are open and they’re finally talking about things they’ve needed to talk about for a long time and now is her chance, but the words are stuck in a lump in her throat--the kind that she can’t really bring herself to swallow around.

“Trini, when you were…I thought I was going to lose you forever and I just…”

She doesn’t know how to tell her that she’s still so scared. Just as scared as she was when she watched Trini fall off the edge of that cliff two days ago. Just as scared as when she’d been performing CPR in the dirt on bloody knees.

That, after everything, she still feels so undeserving that she’s overwhelmed by it.

That she was so sure that Trini was going to die, that she was going to lose her, that she just sort of stopped expecting it to turn out okay. That she’s been faced with the prospect of living without her in the world and she’s not sure what to do now.

“I can’t lose you,” Kim finally manages. “I’m sorry that I...But...Trini, I--”

She never finishes, but it doesn’t seem to matter anyway.

And here we are, at the start of the story again with everything shifting together.

Trini crosses the room in three steps and stands in front of Kim, her hands on Kim’s shoulders, fingers pressing into her neck. “You’re not going to,” she says.

Kim shakes her head. “You can’t promise that.”

“No,” Trini says and she leans into Kim, pulls Kim’s head to her chest in a gesture that’s so remarkably intimate that instinct fails her and Kim is frozen for a moment. Her eyes close and she presses her forehead into the delicate soft of Trini’s chest. “But I can try my absolute-fucking-hardest.”

Her palms slide down Kim’s back in some soothing gesture and Kim sighs. Lets herself cry.

The silence stretches out between them and the fireworks start in the distance, making them both jump. Kim is conscious of the fact that this moment is a beginning and not an end, that she has to say something important, so she opens her mouth, pulls her head away to look up and finds Trini’s eyes in the near darkness.

Something booms in the distance, but Kim doesn't look at the window. Knows it's the fireworks starting.

The lights burst in the sky, spreading red and blue across Trini’s face and Kim says, “I love you, you know. I don’t think I’ll ever stop. You’re...You’re it for me, too.”

And there it is. What they needed to say all along. What they’ve been dancing around for two-and-a-half years, finally finding existence in the air between them.

Like some part of her life--some chunk was missing for the longest time and has finally made it’s way back to her.

Trini looks like she might be crying, too.

Outside, someone is ‘oohing’ over the lights and she can hear Jason’s voice. Trini’s dad, too.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so ridiculous,” Kim says and Trini smiles, lets out a wet laugh.

“I have been, too. It’s okay,” she returns and Kim wraps her arms around her waist, pulls her towards her.

“You’ve been crazy,” Kim teases. “I almost lost you. I’d say that counts as more than just ‘ridiculous’.”

Trini laughs, but it’s not really funny. Even if they’re trying to make a joke out of it now.

“I’m sorry,” she says and her voice has a tone that’s careful, still cautious to bring it up like Kim is. Or maybe it’s just wonder at everything they’ve been through in the past three days. That they’re in this bedroom, pressed together, and they’re _alive_. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You always scare me,” Kim tells her, meaning every word and she leans up as Trini leans down, pressing their foreheads together. “Always will.”

Trini doesn’t smile, but she’s close and Kim can smell her shampoo as her hair frames their faces. “How can I fix it?” she asks, breathes the words against Kim’s lips.

Kim’s hands slide up Trini’s back, finding her shoulder blades beneath the fabric of her t-shirt. “You can’t,” she says honestly. “I don’t want you to.”

Trini exhales this long breath and then leans down and kisses her. Presses her lips so firmly against Kim’s that Kim gasps into her mouth. Because this kiss is different than any they’ve shared before, somehow. It’s heavy and cautious.

Kim thinks it could go on and on if she didn’t need to breathe again.

Trini tastes like those popsicles Billy bought for the party--the strawberry kind, in particular--and her tongue darts out to capture what she can. Trini pushes her back until she’s sliding up the mattress and then she’s framing Kim’s hips with her knees, straddling her on the bed.

And this is new.

“What are you--?” Kim starts, but Trini pulls away and shakes her head.

“Fixing it,” she says and then she flips Kim on top of her somehow and Trini’s shirt is on the floor and--

This is _definitely_ new.

Not to say they haven’t been somewhere similar before, because they have. Once. On the couch downstairs, that night where that had almost been too much, too fast.

But tonight is different.

Trini fumbles with Kim’s jeans button--can’t quite manage it from the bottom--and then they’re tumbling across the mattress again until Trini is on her knees tugging them down Kim’s legs. “Why do you keep wearing these things?” she asks, and then she sees the bandages.

Something in Kim wants to apologize. Wants to say, _Don’t feel bad._ Or, _It was Rita, not you_.

Or, _It should have healed already, actually._

But she doesn’t get the chance.

Trini drops her jeans on the floor somewhere by her own shirt and then presses a tentative kiss to the bend of Kim’s right knee, right by the bandaging. Kim watches her with her hands coming down to rest on Trini’s shoulders, brushing across the soft skin there as Trini presses light kisses to her skin.

She’s shaking, Kim sees, and Kim feels herself shaking, too, but then Trini is against her again and they’re kissing anyway.

None of it matters.

“Are you sure?” Kim asks a few minutes later, wincing as she kneels above Trini, her mouth pressed hotly into the bone of Trini’s hip as she pulls off her shorts and chucks them onto the ground.

It seems impossible. Like some dream she’s been having for as long as she can remember.

If someone had told her two-and-a-half years ago on the edge of that cliff that trying to keep Trini from running again would lead to this, Kim isn’t sure she would have believed them.

“Yes,” Trini gasps, pulling her up to kiss her again, to pull at Kim’s lips with her teeth. “Hurry. Before the boys interrupt us again.”

Kim starts to laugh, but she doesn’t get the chance to finish it all the way. Because she’s imagined this for a while now--let the thought of it haunt her during nights when Trini slept platonically beside her, or when she found herself awake in the early morning with nothing but a wired bundle of energy making her stomach roll hotly.

But it isn’t suave like she pictured.

It’s no movie love-scene with careful camera angles and low lighting.

She accidentally digs her elbow into Trini’s thigh on her way back, making her grunt out in pain and it’s maybe a little awkward--a little weird--to have sex for the first time with someone who’s been your best friend for two years.

Someone who’s seen most of these parts of you and just never touched them.

But it’s fine. More than.

Kim presses Trini back against the bed frame and pushes her slowly into the mattress, sighing into Trini’s mouth as she’s pulled immediately down in order to deepen the kiss.

“You’re so beautiful,” Kim whispers against Trini’s jawline, tugging the straps of Trini’s bra down and pinning her hand between Trini’s back and the mattress in order to unclasp it. It joins the rest of their clothes on the floor.

“You’re not even looking at me,” Trini jokes and, is she really cracking wise when they’re _this_ close to--?

Of course she is.

“Seeing isn’t believing,” Kim says quietly, pressing the curve of her smile into Trini’s neck and then nipping at her pulse point. “Believing is seeing.”

“Don’t quote _The Santa Clause_ when we’re about to have sex, Kim.”

Kim laughs and Trini echoes the sound beautifully back to her.

The humor of the moment isn’t lost, but it does get buried then, as Trini’s warm palms slide up Kim’s stomach and find her chest for the second time ever--much more reassured now than they were that first time.

Trini sits up a little and trails her mouth down to replace her hands--those talented fingers--and Kim hadn’t even been aware that it was possible to be so close already before they’d even done much.

“Please, Trin,” she gasps out, grinding her hips down onto Trini’s. “Don’t be a tease.”

Trini pulls her mouth away and looks at Kim in disbelief. “Did Kimberly Hart just tell _me_ not to be a tease?”

In another time--if Kim _weren’t_ half-naked and Trini weren’t half-naked--she might have reciprocated the joke. But one brief halt for humor is too many and Kim just rolls her hips down again in answer.

Trini groans, but at least seems to get the message.

And it’s weird, yes, but it’s almost like it’s perfect in its own imperfect way, really. Kim presses her lips to Trini’s and she thinks one of them may be crying, which seems sudden, but she can’t really be sure anyway.

But it’s still wonderful. Everything's coming together.

Cue the credits.

It’s perfect and it’s Trini in her arms, underneath her, and it’s real. Trini is alive and she’s breathing and she’s here and it’s possible that Kim is finally worthy of this--of getting that which she’s so desperate for. All she wants.

That it might last.

Trini’s hand finds her in the darkness, settles warmly between Kim’s thighs, making her gasp and drop her face into Trini’s neck. Because everything is suddenly too much and she can’t look at Trini anymore. Can’t bring herself to do it.

“Oh my god,” Trini whispers, her fingers swift and steady inside of her.

Kim sighs into her neck and groans out a pleading, “ _Yes_ ,” that she might end up being embarrassed about later as Trini finds that _spot_ and her thumb reaches up and--

She tightens around Trini’s fingers a moment later and when she pulls back Trini is smiling sadly, as if to ask, silently, how it was.

So Kim presses her lips to Trini’s as those fingers slide away, making her groan a little at the loss of contact. “You’re amazing,” she whispers and Trini doesn’t look like she believes her, but she _does_ look a little relieved.

“You don’t have to,” Trini says when Kim starts kissing down her neck again, but her eyes are closed and she sounds dangerously close to crying.

Kim stops what she’s doing and looks up at her, frowning, until Trini opens her eyes and looks at her. “You’re ridiculous,” she says. “This isn’t some one-sided thing, Trini.”

Trini’s gaze is almost too intense to hold. She looks unsure, still, but doesn’t fight her, so Kim slides down her body, lips trailing across her chest and her tongue swiping below her bellybutton. “You’re... _Kim_ , I can’t--” Trini tries, making Kim’s stomach tighten, her chest feel light. And then it’s just, “ _Please_.”

Kim smiles and leans her head down, pulls Trini’s knees over her shoulders and says, “I know the feeling.”

When her mouth descends, Kim thinks Trini’s gasp might be one of the best things she's ever experienced.

Next to her rasping out a, “Holy _fuck_.”

And then Trini writhes above her, crying out just before the fireworks slow down outside, before the party comes back into full swing with voices that sound as light as Kim feels.

It's lucky--explosions covering the noise of Trini coming undone as she grasps at Kim’s hair, her shoulders, and then pulls her up until they’re tangled together in the bed.

Trini is crying now and Kim cups her face, brings her lips up to the other girl’s forehead. “I don’t usually make girls cry when I go down on them.”

It’s an echo of that night on the couch and Trini catches it because she’s smiling. They’re not sad tears, Kim thinks.

And she knows _that_ feeling, too.

“You don’t usually go down on girls, I don’t think,” Trini returns and Kim feels like her smile must look ridiculously cheesy, but she can’t tamp it down.

“Happy tears?” she asks and Trini laughs, swipes a finger under her eye.

“Very happy,” she says. “I love you, y'know.”

“Good,” Kim says. Then, “I love you, too. A shit-ton,” as she gathers her into her arms, pulls Trini as close as she can, and she doesn’t think about cliff’s or coins or CPR. Doesn’t think of Tommy in the hospital or anything like that.

She just presses her lips to Trini’s temple as Trini laughs and the hollow of her ear as Trini says, "A shit-ton," in agreement, laughing softly at the tickle of air escaping past Kim’s parted lips.

And, of all the words jumbled in Kim’s mind--all those apologies she’s long since forgotten and excuses she never made--there isn’t one for this.

Maybe, she decides, it’s better that way.

.

 **Zack ‘Attack’ Taylor** _@Zackipedia --_ 10m

 _@whatsfortrinner_ told u it was the sluttiest holiday ;)

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner_ \-- 9m

 _@Zackipedia_ Dude. Shut up. And talk to me like a normal person. You’re sitting next to me.

 

 **Zack ‘Attack’ Taylor** _@Zackipedia_ \-- 8m

 _@whatsfortrinner_ more fun to call u out here. also fix ur hair in the back. or get on top next time.

 

 **Jason Scott** _@GrreatScott_ \-- 7m

 _@whatsfortrinner @Zackipedia_ can you stop trolling twitter for like 5 mins?

 

 **Kimberly Hart** _@himberlykart_ \-- 5m

 _@GrreatScott_ no, they can’t. they’re physically incapable.

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner_ \-- 4m

 _@himberlykart_ You’re on here too?? Maybe you get off first and then I will??

 

 **Zack ‘Attack’ Taylor** _@Zackipedia_ \-- 3m

 _@himberlykart @whatsfortrinner_ save it for the bedroom ladies ;)

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner_ \-- 3m

 _@Zackipedia_ I hate you so much.

 

 **Kimberly Hart** _@himberlykart_ \-- 2m

 _@whatsfortrinner_ but you love me, right?

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner_ \-- 2m

 _@himberlykart_ Yes, you and only you.

 

 **Billy Cranston** _@WilliamCranston2000_ \-- 1m

 _@whatsfortrinner_ Hey!

 

 **Trini Ortiz-Kwan** _@whatsfortrinner -- 1m_

 _@WilliamCranston2000_ You too, of course, Billy.

 

 **Billy Cranston** _@WilliamCranston2000_ \-- 53s

 _@whatsfortrinner_ Good! :)

 **Kimberly Hart** _@himberlykart -- 17s_

 _@whatsfortrinner_ what Billy said (also i love you too)

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it, folks. 
> 
> might write more for this universe if anyone is interested in it. hmu on Tumblr if you want. i'm usually bored/thirsting for validation.

**Author's Note:**

> title from The Head and the Hearts "All We Ever Knew", chapter titles from their song "Rhythm & Blues".
> 
> lots of references. too many to list. assume if it's something that exists that i don't own it, obvs.
> 
> hit me up on [Tumblr](http://housewithoutwindows.tumblr.com) if you want.
> 
> or just scream at me here.


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